title: Optimize mySql for faster alter table add column
body: <p>I have a table that has 170,002,225 rows with about 35 columns and two indexes.  I want to add a column.  The alter table command took about 10 hours.  Neither the processor seemed busy during that time nor were there excessive IO waits.  This is on a 4 way high performance box with tons of memory.</p>
  
  <p>Is this the best I can do?  Is there something I can look at to optimize the add column in tuning of the db?</p>