The other day we began to encounter weird and random errors on small and innocent queries that shouldn’t give any errors at all. It all lead to one of our most basic health checks failing for no apparent reason.

The first clue that popped into our minds was related to case-sensitivity, since the failing check was looking for the column names of the only table in the schema with UPPER CASE name. This symptom was especially weird since all of this was happening on MySQL setups running on Windows, and so we’re not sure if this was being caused by some internal code library, MySQL, or Windows itself.

Since that was the only clue we then had, it seemed obvious that we should start fiddling with the lower_case_table_names system variable. After a couple of restarts, this approach was leading us nowhere, so we finally gave up on it. …

Can you hear me back there? Anyone have a problem hearing me?

Let's have a look here then... Blog is active, name chosen, sidebar seems to work. Hmmm this Sun blogging system isn't too bad. Looks like I can configure this pretty much how I want it as I get some time.

Well, this is Dups on the Sun/MySQL Web Team and this will be my technical blog of things done, of things to come, of things to do and of things a-happening for anything that isn't well, personal and about photography. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, you might want to mosey on over to http://www.dups.ca/blog and my photo blog at http://www.dups.ca

So what's my expertise?

I always joke that I am the dumbest person in the room. My "expertise" often involves me …

(Or “the return of 451 CAOS Links“)

Having been a bit busy for the last three weeks I have a bit of catching up to do on the latest open source software news. Here’s the headlines that caught my eye.

MySQL co-founder resigns from Sun
No, not that one. David Axmark resigned stating “I HATE all the rules that I need to follow, and I also HATE breaking them. It would be far better for me to “retire” from employment and work with MySQL and Sun on a less formal basis.” If I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one co-founder may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both …

The rationale for this change is that MIXED mode as default may break existing applications, where statements like the following are used:

UPDATE t1 SET a=1 WHERE @@server_id = 1; …

Letzte Woche endete das »XAMPP kompakt«-Preisausschreiben und gerade eben habe ich die Päckchen mit den Gewinnen zur Post gebracht. Zunächst zur Preisfrage: Wer gilt als der Vater des Apache Webservers? Die richtige Antwort ist: Rob McCool. Wer sich für weitere Details zu den Antworten interessiert, der sei auf meinen privaten Blogbeitrag zu diesem Thema hingewiesen.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch an die zehn Gewinner. Die Bücher und drei T-Shirts gehen an: Jan aus Hamburg, Michael aus Berlin, Daniel aus Pichl bei Wels in Österreich, Uwe aus Wiesenburg, Stephan aus Offenburg, Vadim aus Heidenheim und anderen, die aber nicht persönlich genannt werden wollen oder noch nicht auf meine Gewinnbenachrichtung reagiert haben. …

If you use MySQL, you may want to give OpenSolaris a try. Why? It's open source and has great features, like ZFS and DTrace, which make life a lot easier for MySQL DBAs.  

• ZFS is a 128-bit file system that automates common administrative tasks, protects data from corruption, provides compression, and allows for adding and removing storage easily (just to name a few things its capable of).  It is great for MySQL deployments in that DBAs can add or remove storage without restarting the database and fast snapshots are a breeze.  Additonally, ZFS shows better performance than UFS.  See these results performed by MySQL. 
• DTrace helps administrators analyze, debug, and optimize their application environment.  It's a great tool for MySQL DBAs since it …

Percona's patches are now available to a wider audience via OurDelta, a community effort to provide  builds with features (Percona patches, Google patches, etc) and storage engines (PBXT, Sphinx, etc) that aren't in the main MySQL server. Arjen Lentz is really the brainchild behind this. Kudos Arjen!

What does this mean for the Percona patches? Well, now you can get them in more places.  But it doesn't change our own commitment to keep innovating in ways our customers (and we ourselves) find useful.  We're still building our own builds and …

Want to use Dtrace or ZFS but are unfamiliar with building MySQL on Solaris? Dont panic, its never been easier. Here are the steps that worked for me.

1. Install OpenSolaris using the latest development ISO file
2. Install developer tools

   pfexec pkg install ss-dev

3. Download 5.1.28rc source
4. Build it

   export CC=/opt/SunStudioExpress/bin/cc
   export CXX=/opt/SunStudioExpress/bin/CC
   export CFLAGS="-xO3" #Your fav compiler flags go here 
   export CXXFLAGS="-xO3"
   
   ./configure --with-plugins=innobase,myisam --with-mysqld-libs=-lmtmalloc
   gmake 
   

Yes, it is that simple. Of course you could just download the binaries and use them too; they work just fine.

Kickfire™, Inc. today announced that it has entered into a global multi-year MySQL Enterprise™ data warehouse agreement with Sun Microsystems. Under the terms, Kickfire's Series 2000 and 3000 analytic appliances will include a MySQL Enterprise subscription, providing customers with a fully integrated, plug-and-play solution. Kickfire will provide customers a single point of contact for both hardware and MySQL™ technical support, ensuring a seamless end-user experience.

With the build system, repos, patches and launchpad sorted, we can release! First up from OurDelta is a build of 5.0.67, using patchrev d6, for i386/x86_64. This is basically Percona patchset 5 with a few fixes plus the Sphinx storage engine. It even passes the testsuite ;-)

• RHEL/CentOS 4.6/5.2 RPMs and YUM repo info
• Ubuntu Hardy DEBs and apt-get repo info

Other useful links:

• Launchpad project and patch repo
• Developer team and mailing list (do join!)
• Bug handling

Now, …