Two weeks ago we had the first small get-together of MySQL users in Helsinki. About a dozen people attended, so we had a good chance to talk shop in detail. It would be interesting to expand this group further, plus I know several people who'd probably have interesting stuff to share but couldn't make it. So, we'll have to do this again. Any volunteer organizers?

Our DBAs had put together a bit of material that I spoke about, since they couldn't make it this time. I promised to post it here, but I've been really busy with other stuff, so here goes - better late than never.

How to back up MySQL using free tools As far as production backups go, mysqldump doesn't really cut it. Too slow, too much load to the database, locks too many things, etc. Innobackup is good, but sometimes you don't want to invest in the licenses. Here's how to do it with free tools only, Linux + LVM (applicable to other environments).
The good:

Nokia has announced an updated version of their Internet Tablet with the new N810.  This is a huge upgrade to an already solid device and platform.  Highlights of the N810 include:

• Slide out keyboard
• Faster CPU, faster boot times
• Built-in wi-fi and GPS
• 2 GB internal memory, expandable with Micro-SD cards
• Built-in Opera browser, email, media player
• Compatible with Skype, YouTube, Facebook etc
• Updated Linux Maemo user interface
• 4 hour battery life
• 800 x 480 display
• 5 x 2.83 x 0.55-inches, 7.97 ounces

The N810 looks like a great device and a great open source platform for developers.  Existing …

So, like most things involving development, release schedule, marketing, community events, press releases — well, pretty much anything at all — the release of MySQL 5.1.22 as a Release Candidate stirred emotions of many MySQLers, both internal and external. If there's one thing I've learned from working at MySQL for nearly two years, it's that there is no shortage of emotion in our beloved little company.

This, of course, can be both a blessing and a curse. You can compare the dilemma of our situation as similar to the framers of a government. Stray too much towards absolute democracy, and efficiency and direction can be lost. Veer too much towards despotism and you get a well-oiled, but utterly one-tracked, machine. And thus the latest debates internal to MySQL over what the newest MySQL 5.1.x should be called — beta? gamma? RC? speckledottedgobblegook? — were fierce. …

It is submission time now, with about one week left till proposal submission deadline. Both me and Vadim had submitted few talks to the Grand Jury which will make elite selection of sessions for MySQL Users Conference and we plan to submit few more.

Our experience in MySQL is rather broad - we can prepare talks in areas of MySQL Performance Optimization, Scaling, High Availability and Replication , efficient application design, good operations practices or take one of applications we helped with and show its internals as a case. We can do some new talks or update some of old talks with modern material such as those about general MySQL Performance Optimization or Innodb Tuning.

Anyway we would like to hear what would you like to hear about on MySQL Users Conference and if that falls in our area of experience we'll propose such talk !

Entry posted by peter | …

Jim Winstead, one of our top developers, recently sent a link to an article by Bob Warfield "To build better software, you need fewer people." Jim's one of the unsung heroes of MySQL who works like crazy to eliminate bugs whether in the server, in our ODBC driver or lending a hand on various storage engines. But while he's a heads-down hard-working guy, he's also very thoughtful about what makes for good software development. So when he highlights an article, it's always worth reading and figuring out how to apply some of the ideas at MySQL. In his blog, Bob... READ MORE

Recently I wanted to setup a little MySQL sandbox where I could hack away at MySQL with reckless abandon.? A sandbox is different than a test environment, it’s usually one which is very breakable.? You want to be able to break things, or rather take them completely apart and put them back together.? It’s the only way to understand all of the moving parts.

So searching google, I happened upon Giuseppe Maxia’s Replication Playground. It basically installs into an unprivileged directory, one master, and three slaves.? You can then test out various scenarios. Read his blog entry.

It is trivial to install, however I encountered some issues with MySQL 5.0, which caused me some troubles.? I sent him my feedback, and comments, and it looks like he has …

MySQL Boston September/October 2007 User Group

Before the MySQL Proxy tutorial at the September/October Boston MySQL User Group, we had a few questions. This video has those questions -- odd myisam corruption from having 2 machines with the same server-id and a question on upgrading Mysql from 3 to 5, with a followup on how to figure out when to upgrade.

One of the many reasons to come to a MySQL Meetup, is because you’ll learn something new.

We cater for beginners - Minh Van Nguyen

We cater for the more intermediate - advanced users - Arjen Lentz

You’ll start hacking stuff up, while you’re there!

You also get demonstrations, with live human beings, showing a man-in-the-middle-attack

More photos are at Flickr. Where are your meetup photos?

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This certainly took longer than expected, but here are some pictures that I took during our MySQL Developer Meeting in Heidelberg, Germany last month. Enjoy!

Personally, I’m not a fan of more than one ndbd per machine…

Diamond Notes » Fun with Running a Cluster on Two Servers

Others might argue with this, but I would never put the SQL nodes on the same servers as the ndbd nodes for production. Some say you can run multiple ndbd nodes on the same server and I am more comfortable with that since I can lock the ndbd daemon into memory and know its not going to change (my ndbd nodes on those two servers have been at exactly 71.3% since I started them up. If I had servers for the ndbd nodes that had 16+ gigs of RAM I might start allocating 4 gigs of RAM to a ndbd daemon with 3+ daemons per node. My understanding is that this helps keep the transactional logs for the nodes under control. When you do a ndbd node restart it takes less time for a node to get up and running because of the …