I ran into a very interesting issue with a customer recently. The customer was storing JPEGs in MySQL (as BLOBs obviously) and was wanting to setup some additional MySQL slaves. Nothing crazy there. So I did the normal steps of scheduling a mysqldump with the --all-databases and --master-data options. Trouble is, the next day when I start importing the dump, 'mysql' bombed up with "ERROR at line X: Unknown command '\0'". I used 'sed' to pull out the lines around the error and didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary. After a bit of Googling, one suggestion was to do a simultaneous backup and restore (basically a "mysqldump .. | mysql -h ..."). In this case, since I was using an existing slave to do the backups, this was something that was feasible to do. Unfortunately, the result was the same.

It turns out that 'mysqldump' will not always product a dump that is always BLOB friendly. To get around this, the '--hex-blob' option …

This is the 150th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. Someone accidentally left Dave Edwards‘ cage unlocked, and he escaped, thus leaving me with the pleasurable duty of compiling the 150th weekly Log Buffer.

Many people other than Dave are finding release this week. Giuseppe Maxia explains some details of MySQL’s New Release Model. Andrew Morgan announces a New MySQL Cluster Maintenance Release. Aleksandr Kuzminsky of the MySQL Performance …

XtraBackup is an Open Source online (non-blockable) backup solution for the InnoDB and XtraDB storage engines. It works with both MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 (and possibly 5.4 as well) and is distributed under the GPLv2.

Some weeks ago Vadim announced the availability of xtrabackup-0.7, stating that they consider it stable enough now to label this version a "Release Candidate". I've been maintaining RPM packages of xtrabackup on the fine openSUSE Build Service for quite some time now, RPMs of 0.7 for a number of distributions are now …

As Baron points out, Percona’s Xtrabackup tool can be used just like InnoDB Hot Backup.

Many are wondering, “is it good enough?” In fact, I wondered the same thing, and after a few weeks of using and testing Xtrabackup (on machines that have MyISAM and InnoDB tables), I can say:

0) We have not run into any problems with backing up InnoDB tables; on the machines we’ve run it on (RHEL 5.3 and Debian) it has been stable.

1) We were able to use one of the binaries provided by Percona — we did not have to compile anything. Binaries are provided for 64-bit versions of Linux

2) Innobackupex is the script analogous to Innobackup. Basically, this is a wrapper script for Xtrabackup that will copy the …

I just realized that I haven't blogged for more than a month! Shame on me. But I will blame it on being away on conferences and vacation for quite some time And if you are following me on twitter, you may have noticed what I was going on in my life and that I did't get hit by a bus...

So what was going on since I returned back home from the MySQL Conference? First off, I uploaded und sorted my pictures from the conference and the Drizzle developer day on Flickr. I also uploaded the slides (PDF) from Colin and myself speaking about "MySQL Server Backup, …

Since writing and speaking a bit more about the “relax! a failure is not an emergency” concept, more and more people approach me with interesting horror stories. I’m scribbling a few backup-related ones here for your enjoyment - and naturally there are important lessons.

Story 1: A place makes backups that get shipped off-site, interstate even. One day a couple of files are lost, and so someone files a request to retrieve said files from the archive. Well, apparently that’s something that should be done as it creates some very stressed responses and a quoted timeline of a few weeks. In the end the issue is resolved through other means and the request stopped - unfortunate, since it would have been very interesting if the requested files would actually ever arrive… clearly a retrieval was not part of the expected process. One also wonders how long a full dataset retrieval would take, or if  it’s even possible!

Well, it took us a little while (we’ve been busy !), but we’ve now posted our presentations on InnoDB from the MySQL Conference and Expo 2009. You can download these presentations by Heikki Tuuri, Ken Jacobs and Calvin Sun from the InnoDB website, as follows:

• Ken and Heikki: InnoDB: Innovative Technologies for Performance and Data Protection
• Heikki: Crash Recovery and Media Recovery in InnoDB
…

Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara
Originally uploaded by Lenz Grimmer

After a long and uneventful flight from HAM to SFO via FRA, I arrived safely in Santa Clara yesterday. Today we spent the day in San Francisco, for some sightseeing (Downtown, Chinatown, Pier 39 and Fishermen's Wharf) and a bit of shopping. It was a very nice and sunny day, the sunlight helped a lot with getting over the jetlag for a while.

But now I'm pretty tired - I look forward to meeting friends, colleagues and members of our community at the …

PLEASE NOTE: I am currently reviewing and extending this document. While caring for a remarkable amount of MySQL server instances, troubleshooting becomes a common task. It might of interest for you which Recovering a crashed MySQL server After a server … Weiterlesen →

Sure, you've heard it before: [some company's logo] has a new MySQL backup tool that promises to solve all of your data recovery needs. The good news is most of these tools work pretty well. However, they tend to suffer from a similar set of limitations. Most require sophisticated infrastructures or complex setup and maintenance and can become a resource drain for some organizations. You're probably wondering, "Why can't someone build a fully automated MySQL backup solution that you can just turn on and forget?"

I am happy to say that the MySQL Developers at Sun are doing just that. In fact, a prototype will be demonstrated at the 2009 MySQL Users' Conference that will show the feasibility of a fully automated MySQL backup and recovery tool. It's being called the MySQL Time Machine and (with all due respect to all vendors with products of similar names) it allows you to recover your data using a datetime value. How cool is that? Even MySQL …