Syncing DBs prior to RServ replication

I'm looking at syncronizing two database servers with RServ (production / "hot
standby"), and I'm trying to figure out a way to get the initial database on
the slave server syncronized with the master.

Normally, I would 1) turn off all clients, 2) dump the database from the
master, 3) restore it into the slave, 4) turn clients back on, and 5)
replicate regularly.

Unfortunately I'm running the master in a production environment where
anything more than 5 minutes of downtime is a really "Bad Thing®".  The
database dump is about 5G, and so leaving the master down for that entire
time isn't possible.  Is there a recommended way for performing such a "sync"
without any lengthy downtime?

I'm guessing I could start my dump, and then immediately afterward create the
replication tables in the master.  Since the dump is transactional (is it?),
it shouldn't include the replication tables or the replication "snapshot"
information in it's dump, and by the time I finally finish importing the dump
in the new server, I should be able to perform the replication and pick up
all the new / changed records since I started the DB dump.

Will this work?  Is there a better recommended way?  Thanks.

--
Michael A Nachbaur <mike@nachbaur.com>