Andrew, if you didn't mind posting your scripts here, that would
be great. My backup script looks like this at the moment:
telinit 3
restart-aolserver intranet
/etc/rc.d/init.d/oracle8i stop
nice tar cfz /tmp/ora8.tar.gz /ora8
/etc/rc.d/init.d/oracle8i start
telinit 4
Aolserver runs at runlevel 4, so the telinit 3 is turning Aolserver
off. I have a separate script that puts the backed up file
somewhere safe.