Would just like to check if i can use the --no-lock option of xtrabackup and create a backup that i can use for my slave. would i still be able to grab the binlog file and position if i do this? and will the data be consistent? i would like to create a slave based on the master but i could not afford a downtime or even just a flush with read lock. hope someone can help. thanks in advanced.
If you are using xtrabackup itself, and not innobackupex, and if you have only InnoDB tables and no MyISAM tables, then yes. The documentation covers usage of xtrabackup binary separately from innobackupex, and explains how to do this.