I was at MODM4 yesterday, and as always, great fun was had. One common recurring theme though, was getting MySQL to start automatically upon a Linux server’s restart, something which I would have thought just came pretty naturally to sys-admin types. Upon further probing, these systems were all generally CentOS or RHEL based, and it wasn’t just MySQL that gave them problems - it was anything they’d installed out of the stock packages (lighttpd was a popular Apache replacement, that suffered from the same fate).

While I didn’t recollect the exact part of the manual it was stored in, I was informing everyone to make use of the chkconfig tool. Its really as simple as making sure there exists a /etc/init.d/mysql (it must be executable - chmod +x), doing a …

I’ve been a big supporter of Zimbra, because I think they’re one of the few projects/companies that get email/calendering/a groupware solution, right. Sure, I don’t necessarily like the model where they cripple the open source version in terms of say, backups (but this I guess will be fixed when MySQL supports online backups natively). No AdSense zimlet? Its easy enough to write one (with spare time).

What’s annoyed me of late with Zimbra, is its lack of ability to work with my Nokia E61i. Its a known problem (since February this year?), as it also affected the E61 (and probably other Series 60 phones, when you’re trying to access the Zimbra server over IMAP). You get the certificate being displayed, you get the headers, and when you try to open any email bodies, it just stops working.

The …

I have just been notified that my proposal for a one-day MySQL Miniconf at LinuxConfAU 2008 in Melbourne has been accepted, so here's the call-for-papers! The MySQL miniconf was packed all day last time, and we had more proposals than we could fit... so, let's make 2008 a good one too!

There are about 6 or 7 slots of 50 minutes each. We could do 2x25 minutes for some, and possibly a slot with 5 minute lightning talks. A proposal should contain a short title and abstract of what you intend to talk about, what duration the talk would be (5, 25, 50), and a brief bio of yourself. Naturally you may submit multiple abstracts for different topics; chances are that at most one can be accepted so we see a good range of speakers and talks.

Please email your proposals to: m i n i c o n f 0 8 (at) l e n t z (dot) c o m (dot) a u
(so that is miniconf zero-eight at my private domain)
I'll grab one or two other people to …

Andrae and his gang will take some time, with over 100 submissions to consider, but the CfP is now definitely closed and the program committee is busy doing its thing. If you missed out on making a submission, you can of course still try to beg Andrae, but don't push your luck as things do need to move along...

Browsing through the list of proposals, I'm very pleased with the number we received, and also impressed with the quality of the speakers and diverse range of topics. Most are from within Australia, but there are also entries from around the Asia-Pacific, and even as far as Austria and the USA. This should make for a fine program.

hSenid, an Application and Service provider for the Telecom, Financial and Enterprise markets worldwide was recently recognized by MySQL AB as a Gold Partner. hSenid specializes in HR, mobile/wireless and back-end integrations (middleware) ? focused technology solutions and outsourcing services. hSenid uses the popular MySQL open source database to develop and deploy 90 percent of their applications including high availability Telco Grade Applications. With the MySQL Enterprise Gold Partnership, hSenid will be positioned towards the forefront of the open source market to offer cost-effective, high-performance, modern database options to all their customers.

Giuseppe had a great idea this morning on a conference call: why not let campers reduce their lodging costs by doing an all-night hackathon on the Thursday evening? And thus, after a brief check with Polytechnic, was borne the first MySQL Camp Burn-the-Midnight-Oil-Hackathon!

There is a limit of 50 people that can stay on site at Polytechnic University overnight (otherwise they need to open up that main buildings and provide security detail, which would be expensive). So, a maximum of 50 folks can bring sleeping bags for Thursday night and hack on their projects. I'm thinking that it would pretty cool to find a sponsor willing to pay for T-Shirts for these All-Night Hackers... If you work for a company interested in sponsoring this type of thing, do let me know.

The …

The T1000 is the first Sun I have spent a lot of energy on for a while.

From the hardware side I am both impressed, and is the norm annoyed
with Sun. The T1000 ALOM, aka "Advanced Lights Out Manager", is
sharp. A Solaris sysadmin friend had told me about the feature a
while ago and had explained that its why he had been seeing Linux
shops by Sun hardware.

And why annoyed? Well lets say a single USB port to boot the machine
off of a DVD drive would have been nice when I had to reload the OS.

So what is ALOM? Its a embedded boot console with its own serial
interface and ethernet port. ssh into it, and you can directly
connect to the console of the computer. You can power it up, shut it
down... everything built into one box.

That is sharp.

I've seen a lot of remote console systems, but I've never been that
…

I am happy to announce that my MySQL Dev Zone interview with David Axmark just went live - if you are curious to hear a few stories about how David and Monty started this whole thing more than 10 years ago, make sure to spend a few minutes and read it here!

I gave a tutorial at OSCON last week on tuning MySQL queries, the EXPLAIN statement, the optimizer, and benchmarking. I've gone ahead and put the tutorial materials online now:

• The workbook (PDF)
• Slide Deck (OpenOffice Impress)
• Slide Deck (PDF)

Note that the zip and tarballs noted in the tutorial workbook will be up once thewench is cleaned up and packaged in with the rest of the materials.

Some say Sun is as cool as OSCon (if not cooler) because, among most companies that support OSCon, only Sun can produce truly underground notes on OSCon.

David Van Couvering reviews Mike Olson's comments about his keynote at OSCon and pontificates about whether the value of Open Source could be limited to the collaboration it fosters. David aptly notes that

Open source and an open community gives you the assurance that the technology you are depending on is not going to be discontinued or put into "maintenance mode," it won't be acquired by someone who you would rather not do business with, and it won't be used as leverage against you to extract money or modify your behavior.

By way of further review, David contrasts MySQL as an Open Source project to …