Security-Enhanced Linux or SELinux is a Linux kernel feature that provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies. It enables a system administrator to create an extra set of rules that define allowed operations for programs even after the standard controls are checked. In other words, SELinux can help improving system security by restricting access of an application to only a few resources it actually needs, which makes it more difficult for an attacker to gain access to the entire system through exploiting any possible vulnerabilities in the application.

However as rarely anything in life is free, is there any price we have to pay to use SELinux on a MySQL server?

I ran a simple MySQL benchmark first with database working in a system with SELinux enabled (SELINUX=enforcing), and then also with the extra security layer entirely disabled (SELINUX=disabled).

The …

I have previously posted about the SQL MERGE statement, and how powerful it is here: https://blog.jooq.org/arcane-magic-with-the-sql2003-merge-statement/ Unfortunately, not all databases support this statement. Also, very often it is quite a bit of overkill, when what you want to do is to simply INSERT or UPDATE a single record, depending on whether it already exists. MySQL's … Continue reading How to simulate MySQL’s INSERT statement extensions →

In case you missed the MySQL Utilities webcast, a replay is available:  http://t.co/7bFAV083

This webcast is a nice overview of all the MySQL utilities including examples. Check it out and see how the MySQL community is going to get automatic failover backup from Oracle.

Please join me tomorrow (Wednesday) for a webinar about the new version of pt-online-schema-change, Percona Toolkit’s tool for performing nonblocking ALTER TABLE operations. Registration is free. I will explain how the tool works and cover some typical use scenarios. This might be helpful if you’re trying to decide whether the tool is right for you. I am also planning to leave plenty of time for questions!

If you have not signed up yet for the OTN Developer Day: MySQL in NYC, hurry time is running out! This is shaping up to be one of the largest developer days yet. We have a great line up of speakers. I look forward to seeing them and a great community turn out Wednesday.

You can review the agenda here and register here.

TokuDB v6.0 is full of great improvements, like getting rid of slave lag, better compression, improved checkpointing, and support for XA.

I’m happy to announce that TokuDB v6.0 is now generally available and can be downloaded here.

Sysbench Performance

I wanted to take this time to talk about one more under-the-hood goody we’ve added to v6.0. In particular, we’ve been working on our locking schemes and have made …

The South East Linux Fest is happening June 8th through the 10th and will feature Beginner MySQl Training Day, Advanced MySQl Training Day, the Open Database Camp, as well as Free & Open Source software based topics. Registration is FREE and I hope to see you in Charlotte!

SELF Schedule

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In the next 6 weeks or so, I will be doing a bunch of speaking. You can come see me if you will be in the New York City metro area (New Brunswick, New Jersey); Charlottesville, Virginia; near Helsinki, Finland and Charlotte, North Carolina.

I will be speaking at the Professional IT Community Conference about MySQL Security. This low-cost conference run by the League of Professional System Administrators, or LOPSA, is not to be missed. The conference runs from Friday, May 11th through Saturday, May 12th. I have spoken at both previous PICC’s and I learned plenty from system administrators while I was not speaking.

I will also be bringing my MySQL Security talk to the Central Virginia MySQL Meetup on Wednesday, May 16th – special …

Read the original article at Tyranny of a Google vote

Image by Hajo de Reijger, politicallyillustrated.com

For the past year I’ve been seeing headline blogs analyzing the effect of Google’s last algorithm update, dubbed the Panda. There was much talk of unfair relegation from the first page of Google search results, and general indignance by the SEO community.

As with any subject in which I only have cursory knowledge I didn’t think much of it. I thought that as long as I didn’t engage in link-buying and whatever is known as “black hat” tactics, the search engines would be fair. What I didn’t realise with Google was how subjective it has become in ranking websites. I was particularly tripped up in the …

An increasing number of organizations run applications that depend on MySQL multi-master replication between remote sites.   I have worked on several such implementations recently.  This article summarizes the lessons from those experiences that seem most useful when deploying multi-master on existing as well as new applications.

Let's start by defining terms.  Multi-master replication means that applications update the same tables on different masters, and the changes replicate automatically between those masters.  Remote sites mean that the masters are separated by a wide area network (WAN), which implies high average network latency of 100ms or more.  WAN network latency is also characterized by a long tail, ranging from seconds due to congestion to hours or even days if a ship runs over the wrong undersea cable.
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