So far the benchmarking script supports Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX. I’m installing virtual machines today to get ready for development on the next OS that the community wants to have supported. Vote today for your choice. Development will begin Friday 2010-09-03.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

We’re proud to announce the next release of MySQL Workbench, version 5.2.27. This is the second maintenance release for 5.2 GA (Generally Available). This maintenance release does not introduce any new features, but focuses on general product improvement and usability.  We hope you will make MySQL Workbench your preferred tool for Design, Development, and Administration of your MySQL database applications.

As always, we want to thank everyone for the great feedback we have received. This helps us to continuously improve and extend the functionality and stability of MySQL Workbench – please keep up on approaching us with any ideas to develop our product even further.

MySQL Workbench 5.2 GA

• Data Modeling
• Query (replaces the old MySQL Query Browser)
• Administration (replaces the old MySQL Administrator)

Please get your copy from our Download site. Sources and binary …

We’re happy to announce the release of MySQL Workbench 5.2.26. This is the first maintenance release for 5.2 GA (Generally Available). We have fixed a number of bugs and made some improvements under the hood. We hope you will make MySQL Workbench your preferred tool for Design, Development, and Administration of your MySQL database applications.

We want to thank everyone for the great feedback we have received. This helps us to continuously improve and extend the functionality and stability of MySQL Workbench – please keep up on approaching us with any ideas to develop our product even further.

MySQL Workbench 5.2 GA

• Data Modeling
• Query (replaces the old MySQL Query
• Administration (replaces the old MySQL Administrator)

Please get your copy from our Download site. Sources and binary packages are available for several platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. …

As part of my IPv6 setup I wanted to check what support I could expect for my current hardware. This post relates the results I got by checking on each one.

• Linux PC – IPv6 is supported in Linux
• MacBook – IPv6 is supported in MacOS X
• Windows 7 NetBook – IPv6 is supported in Windows 7
• Draytek Vigor 2820N – Draytek support in Spain confirmed to plans to implement IPv6 on this box, but they have 1 IPv6 aware router so future models should hopefully have support.
• HP Officejet Ro L7680 Printer – this printer has a network connection. A support request on HP’s website generated an automatic message saying my printer was no longer supported.  So no chance …

Before we get started here, let me state that I am using Ruby 1.9.1 (I refuse to look back!), and that I have not tested this solution on Ruby 1.8.6, but it should work there as well, though I may have some 1.9-isms in my code. Should be easy enough to spot.

I am working on writing an application in Ruby that can talk to an Windows application that has an ActiveX COM Automation object exposed. Ruby is basically the wrapper so that I can access the application from the Linux side of the world. So, I am using Ruby’s DRb to bridge those worlds because, after all, I am the Linux Bloke!

Well, as you may have guessed, I ran into problems with this approach. I simply could not call the COM objects from a call initiated with DRb, though I could call them directly just fine. After scratching my head a bit, I figured it out.

The win32ole module that runs on the Windows side of the world in Ruby only …

Due to firewalls, virus scans, corporate security restrictions, or just plain bad luck; there are times when MySQL just won’t install on a specific Windows server.  Here’s a sure-fire install method.   Relax, I won’t have you run the msi installer again.

The first step is to remove directories from your previous install attempts.  Uninstall from the control panel.  Manually, rename or delete “C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1″.  Next, delete (or rename) the data directory.  Warning! If you have previously entered data into MySQL, deleting the data directory will delete data.  The directory is located at “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\data”.   You may need to unhide the data directory.

Let’s get started.

#1.   …

The MySQL Cluster daemon for MySQL Cluster (ndbd and ndb_mgmd) doesn't by themselves yet let them run as a service (apparently ndb_mgmd does, but I haven't seen it documented anywhere on how to do that). But there are ways to fix this, using some simple Windows tools and some registry hacking.

What you need to find is the Windows Resource Kit from some version of Windows that includes instsrv.exe and srvany.exe. It is not too picky with the actual version of Windows you run it seems, I used the Windows NT 32-bit versions of these on a 64-bit Windows 7 box, and it works just fine.

These two programs are simple and are easy to use:

• instsrv allows you to install a service, it's real simple, just run the program and it will show the options (and these are few).
• srvany allows you to run any odd program, that is not intended run as a service, do do this anyway.

Now, Google a …

I love Wordpress.  Really there isn’t a better blogging platform on this platform.  It’s that good.  And I’ve been using it to self-host my blog for the past year or so.  For awhile, I hosted it using II6 on WHS v1.  That was a real pain as it took several days to find a URL rewriting solution that worked with IIS6.  The past few months I’ve been hosting it on my Windows 7-based media center.  Since that runs IIS7, URL rewriting was easier using the standard URL rewrite module.

A few days ago I decided to test out WHS “Vail”.  After installing it, I wanted to move my blog onto it so I downloaded the Microsoft Web Platform Installer.  It promptly let me know that it couldn’t find any products in my selected language.  Huh?  This is what drives people crazy about Windows software.  Crap just doesn’t make sense sometimes.

I googled and found several links …

Dear MySQL Users,

We’re happy to announce the second Release Candidate (RC) of MySQL Workbench.
Version 5.2.22 includes fixes for 76 bugs.

In case you didn’t know – MySQL Workbench is a modular product and is fully pluggable and scriptable. If you want to write a plug-in for Workbench 5.2, then stay tuned as we will be updating the documentation in the next week with all the details and examples you need on how to write your own plug-ins.

Plug-ins are great for extending or adding to workbench or for automating repetitive tasks. You can do things like adding to menus, exporting your Workbench models custom tailored for your coding environment, adding your own forms, and more. Python is our preferred scripting language but for simple scripts the Lua language can be used as well.

The first plug-in we added is called MySQL Doc Library. It can be used to read the MySQL Documentation offline and features …

I dislike the old perfmon interface and it's unreadable graphs and logs. For a long time I've been searching for a basic vmstat and/or iostat windows port, and one that doesn't rely on that nonsensical cygwin. If anybody knows of one, please leave a comment.
Here's a proof on concept I cooked up in 20 minutes using the PDH (performance data helper) functions. In a nutshell, it queries the PDH counters directly and I'm be free to displaythe data however I like.
Here's what I got so far:

proc_q_len  pagefile  interrupt/s   cswitch/s  %cpu_user  %cpu_sys  %cpu_idle  %disk_busy   %disk_read  %disk_write
  10 …