The summer is over, but as a small consolation there is a new version of XAMPP. And this time, we were able to update all existing four XAMPP versions.

In this version we updated: MySQL (5.0.67), PHP (4.4.9), and phpMyAdmin (2.11.9.2). The Solaris version even got a total of 14 packages updated.

Get the downloads and more details on the specific platforms XAMPP project page.

Back when I started working with computers, you actually carved each character with a machine into oddly shaped pieces of paper. My FORTRAN class required up to two dozen of these carefully manicured pieces of paper for each program. The folks in the RPG class had litterally stacks of data one or two feet deep and my mind boggled at the amount of data these poor folks had to carry around with them. My best guess now is that they may have had up to two thousand records of up to 80 characters. My lowly FORTAN class saw the RPG programming class as demi-gods as they trudged along with trays of cards under their arms.

And then one day it rained. Data cards were sensitive to humidity especially the type of humidity you find in the bottom of a rain filled gutter, 12-edge down. My fellow students and I commiserated with one of those formerly envied RPG students as we viewed what was now a paper mache lump. The object of our empathy had …

As mentioned earlier , Packt sent me their Zenos Core Network and Systems Monitoring by Michael Badger to review.

So I spend the past couple of weeks trying to crawl my way trough it. Not that there was any problem with the book, more with my schedule :) I was hoping to finish it some time ago but time was working against me, even last week when my flight back from Zurich was a bit shorter than planned I couldn't finish reading the book.

But yesterday I managed, Michael managed to write a good book on a hot topic during what was probably one of the most busy of his life.

In 8 chapters Michael manages to explain the different aspects of Zenoss fairly well, he …

[I'm still playing catch-up after a five-month blogging hiatus]

By May of 2008, the Falcon team's technical center of gravity lay squarely within the European continent, so it was only fair and sensible that we gather where the combined travel effort would be at a minimum.

This was to be the first assemblage of the entire team, including new team members. We were also promised (and later cruelly denied) a rare sighting of Hakan K. who was unable to attend the all-hands staff meeting in January or the UC in April, as well as appearances by MC Brown and James Day.

MC did an outstanding job as a one-man advance team, deftly applying his hitherto unknown logistical genius to the task of arranging for accommodations at a reasonably-priced, centrally-located, well-appointed and distinctly …

Recently I was tasked with investigating slippage between master and slave in a standard replication setup.

The client was using Maatkit's mk-table-checksum to check his slave data was indeed a fair copy of that of the master.

mk-table-checksum --algorithm=BIT_XOR h=hostname.local,u=root,p=xxx --replicate=checksum.checksum --emptyrepltbl --chunksize=500000 --databases mydb --sleep 1

He could then examine the checksum.checksum table and see all was well, however there were various tables with different crc values.

PLAIN TEXT SQL:

1. db: mydb
2. tbl: Foo_History
3. chunk: 0
4. boundaries: 1=1
5. this_crc: 30627c76fe658fd9b77eaddf1ea8c03a
6. this_cnt: 2593
7. master_crc: …

The MySQL documentation is huge. In fact, it can sometimes be difficult to get a handle on exactly how big. The main reference manual is large by most documentation standards, the MySQL 6.0 reference manual is almost 2400 pages in length now. Keep in mind that we also have 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.1-Maria manuals, in addition to the GUI tools, NDBAPI and other material that we produce and you realize that there are thousands of pages of documentation to wade through, if you want.

We’ve toyed for ages with different methods of splitting up the manual and making it more accessible, but the reality is that different manuals introduce other issues, and wouldn’t actually solve the issue of finding information in the online manual. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that we have traditionally listed our manuals by their titles, not, necessarily, by what they contain and what you might want to know.

For an example, imagine that you …

New features in cmon 1.1:

• used-defined log destination (earlier only possible to log to syslog or console)
  cmon --logfile=/tmp/cmon.log
  The logs are rotating and rotate when 1MB size has been reached.
• init.d script - in initd/cmon is a script that can be used to start and stop cmon. You may have to edit the content of that script (e.g paths).
  

Bugs fixed in cmon 1.1:

• various issues in the php scripts
• fixed queries managing the backup and backuplog tables (the queries periodically removed all entries). Now the backup/backuplog/restore/restorelog tables can max contain 100 records, based on age.
• Improvements in documentation around how to get graphs working (you need php-gd).
  

Get cmon at …

Ever wonder what is stored in InnoDB buffer pool at the moment ?

It is not so hard actually - we made a short patch for MySQL 5.0 which show innodb buffer pool content

PLAIN TEXT SQL:

1. mysql> SELECT * FROM information_schema.INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_CONTENT; 
2. +-----------+-------+--------+---------+----------+------------+-----------+--------------+--------------+----------------+-----------------+--------------+------------------+
3. | BLOCK_NUM | SPACE | OFFSET | RECORDS | DATASIZE | FLUSH_TYPE | FIX_COUNT | LRU_POSITION | PAGE_TYPE_ID | PAGE_TYPE      | INDEX_NAME      | TABLE_SCHEMA | TABLE_NAME       |
4. …

We've been looking for a good MySQL DBA at work for a little over a year now. At this point I'm beginning to wonder if DBA's are a dying breed all together...Maybe it's the fact that we're in the Northwest (Seattle), or perhaps they've all gone to work for Percona?Perhaps everyone has more fun developing? (We haven't had much trouble filling our Sr. Development positions or QA positions..)It's