After some sprint coding and testing I am more than happy to declare Xtrabackup getting into alpha stage. And alpha means more that we have some dirty hacks in code / not fully scripted builds / not fully tested all MySQL versions, but backups work just fine! I am able to backup our production box and restore it!

As there were some questions how xtrabackup works, let me explain it: it is supposed to be online, non-blocking backup solution for InnoDB / XtraDB engines for MySQL 5.0 / 5.1 versions. Currently we tested only for 5.0.75 / 5.0.77 and it works just fine. We also modified innobackup script ( thanks InnoDB for making it GPL), so it can be used to backup of MyISAM tables also.

Beside standard --backup and --prepare options we have implemented --throttle to limit IO activity during backup, so we do not hurt production box by intensive file copying operations.

As for now it is available only in source code version on …

Background Knowledge

I have Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 1 with the following optical media drives. The system is approximately one year old.

• Manufacture: LG
• Model: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM_GDRH20N
• Firmware version: 0D04

• Manufacture: LG
• Model: HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H73N
• Firmware version: B103

Problem

There are two issues I’m experiencing all resulting in the fact that windows explorer is not refreshing the drive contents and/or drive volume label. Both issues occur on CD/DVD reader and CD/DVD writer drives. As well I’ve tried multiple discs from ones I’ve burnt to discs that were commercial produced and these discs all work fine on other computer systems.

1. My Computer/Windows Explorer is not refreshing the CD/DVD drive contents.
2. My Computer/Windows Explorer is not refreshing the CD/DVD …

The ISV Engineering team at Sun has released 3 new documents giving important MySQL implementation and performance advice on Solaris Containers, Java technology, and SugarCRM.

The first is another great publication in the Sun BluePrint™ Series called Running MySQL Database in Solaris Containers by Ritu Kamboj and Giri Mandalika.  Solaris Containers are a Sun unique virtualization option that let applications run on the same server in isolation from each other.    This allows easier workload resource management, …

The ISV Engineering team at Sun has released 3 new documents giving important MySQL implementation and performance advice on Solaris Containers, Java technology, and SugarCRM.

The first is another great publication in the Sun BluePrint™ Series called Running MySQL Database in Solaris Containers by Ritu Kamboj and Giri Mandalika.  Solaris Containers are a Sun unique virtualization option that let applications run on the same server in isolation from each other.    This allows easier workload resource management, maintenance …

.. is up on MySQL Developer Zone at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/getting_started_dtrace_saha.html

Have a comment on the quality, or the clarity or the usefulness? Let me know!

Many thanks to Giuseppe, Lenz, Martin MC Brown and Aaron for helping in various ways.

.. is up on MySQL Developer Zone at http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/getting_started_dtrace_saha.html

Have a comment on the quality, or the clarity or the usefulness? Let me know!

Many thanks to Giuseppe, Lenz, Martin MC Brown and Aaron for helping in various ways.

Warning... what follows is a murky mess.
It's filed as MySQL bug#43398 (verified!) but it's triggered by cPanel doing evil.

Scenario....Start a mysql server, as normal
Then run mysql_install_db (as root, like you would when you first install MySQL)
See a new binlog file get created, with ownership/group root!Of course you generally wouldn't run mysql_install_db while a server is running, but there's nothing to prevent you (or something else) from doing so!
--bootstrap just shouldn't initialise binlog, then there wouldn't be a issue.

cPanel runs mysql_install_db in its automatic upgrade scripts (dangerous already, automatically upgrading MySQL Server on a system!), it's run every night on cPanel systems even if no upgrade is done, and it behaves exactly as described above. It then chowns the binlog files to mysql:mysql which is of course …

Hint... don't install stuff like this on your production servers unless you have advanced Linux skills... http://www.grsecurity.net/
It's custom kernel modifications. So any time you upgrade kernel, you need an update of this stuff as well. And never mind the potential bugs that in themselves can cause security and reliability issues.
You don't "just" want to install any such package on a production server (MySQL or otherwise), unless you really really know what you're doing. It's just not a userspace kind of thing.

Apparently it's something that some cPanel deployments install to further secure their system, but that comes to the fundamental question of whether you want to be running cPanel in serious production environments.... beef for another post, and I'll get to that shortly.

Much like most people, I try work out my class dependencies through a top-down 'waterfall'-ish approach. By attempting this, I think allows me to keep the structure very clear and understandable.

excuse my non-existent UML skills

In this example the Ingredient class (and subclasses) is Never aware of any Recipe classes, but only the other way round.

I try to apply the same model to instantiated objects and packages (groups of classes). When an object encapsulates another object, I attempt to make sure the sub-object object is not aware of the parent. When I design packages, I attempt to make sure 2 packages don't require 'each other'.

An example where this could be a problem is the following. Say, I have a 'Database' package. I want to log every database error to a 'Log' package. The 'Log' package has a couple of implementations, such as 'Log_File', 'Log_Syslog', but now I added 'Log_Database' to log any …

A very special 5 minute DBA post here, we are crossing over… sys admin & dba oh my! I tend to always look first at the OS, and then move over to looking at what is going on inside the database. So if you have five minutes to look at the OS, what do you look for? What tools do you use? What gotchas are their?

First Everyone should be familiar with top. This is a great tool and place to start.