shell script to set mysql timeout

I have written a script to fetch mysqldump from a huge database. But the problem is it locks the table. So what i did is enhanced the script which will fetch the dumpfile in batches. ( I did it monthly basis) but still it locks the table. after googling and reading several blog posts I found that this problem of timeout. Now how do I se开发者_如何学Got time out in shell script? Thanks!

setup a replication slave, and when you want to dumping the data, use the slave instead of master
when mysqldump causing table locking, it does not affecting your current running application (which run on the master)