In the spirit of the recent MySQL Conference, I decided to have some fun and make a MySQL Storage Engine that would be of practical use. My idea is that so, so much information is available through, say, /proc on Linux and FreeBSD that it is a shame there isn't a convenient way to get to it short of ssh or (shudder) snmp. So, I made a little storage engine that turns arbitrary files into MySQL tables. It supports basic things like space separation to derive columns, etc. Pretty simple, but I'm amazed how easy it was and how useful it could be.

Enjoy!

http://code.google.com/p/mysql-filesystem-engine/

Ideas for files to watch:

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• /proc/mdstat - how is your software RAID array doing? any bad …

Over at Tecosystems, SOG was trying to explain a misquote of his in Computerworld re:MySQL and somehow drafted a great explanation of dual-license models. The short version of my explanation went something like this: in layman's terms (I know there... READ MORE

The 2007 MySQL Conference is over, and I finally made it back home. I have some notes on some of the sessions, which really aren't that great, so if you want to see what you missed, you should read Planet MySQL. But I will give some of the highlights.

There's a lot of new development around storage engines.

MySQL-5.1 has a pluggable storage engine architecture which allows you to load and unload storage engines while the server is running. Brian Aker explained that this is for cases where you have a stable server setup and only want to upgrade the storage engine. All the storage engines in 5.1 are pluggable, and there are already some third-party proprietary storage engines available.

One of the relatively new third-party storage engines is SolidDB. Solid has been around for quite awhile. In fact, I was using Solid for a project in the late 1990's …

Over at Solfo I play sysadmin in between being a programmer and DBA. Between real hardware, xen boxes and network equipment we have a few dozen devices. One of the really neat tools we use for monitoring is Munin. It's (yet another) tool to graph system stats and anything else you can write a plugin for.

One of the default plugins is memory use. In this graph you can see the memory usage for one of our application servers. Last week we changed some configuration so the application won't grow to eat a ton of memory every few hours.

Other similar tools are Cacti and Ganglia. I've played with both but they didn't hook me like Munin did. I never really liked …

Over at Solfo I play sysadmin in between being a programmer and DBA. Between real hardware, xen boxes and network equipment we have a few dozen devices. One of the really neat tools we use for monitoring is Munin. It's (yet another) tool to graph system stats and anything else you can write a plugin for.

One of the default plugins is memory use. In this graph you can see the memory usage for one of our application servers. Last week we changed some configuration so the application won't grow to eat a ton of memory every few hours.

Other similar tools are Cacti and Ganglia. I've played with both but they didn't hook me like Munin did. I never really liked …

Ever since we switched out build process from Java 1.4 to Java 5 (1.5.0_09) we have seen FindBugs crash with an OutOfMemoryError when started from ant. The whole thing is running under RedHat Enterprise Linux 4. The output is always the same:

[findbugs] Running FindBugs...
[findbugs] Exception in thread "CompilerThread0" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: requested 134217736 bytes for Chunk::new. Out of swap space?

Our first attempts to increase the heap size with the -Xmx VM parameter did not help. We suspected the newer FindBugs release we had installed roughly at the same time, but this turned out to be wrong, because newer and older versions showed the same behaviour.

Armed with the fresh knowledge about the SAP Memory Analyzer just learned at jax.07 I …

Ever since we switched out build process from Java 1.4 to Java 5 (1.5.0_09) we have seen FindBugs crash with an OutOfMemoryError when started from ant. The whole thing is running under RedHat Enterprise Linux 4. The output is always the same:

[findbugs] Running FindBugs...
[findbugs] Exception in thread "CompilerThread0" java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: requested 134217736 bytes for Chunk::new. Out of swap space?

Our first attempts to increase the heap size with the -Xmx VM parameter did not help. We suspected the newer FindBugs release we had installed roughly at the same time, but this turned out to be wrong, because newer and older versions showed the same behaviour.

Armed with the fresh knowledge about the SAP Memory Analyzer just learned at jax.07 I …

Nokia has been making great strides in developing a family of small, pocket sized multimedia devices.  There's the Nokia N800 wi-fi enabled Internet Tablet as well as the recent N95 multimedia phone (though not yet available in the US.)  I wouldn't quite call them computers yet --at least until they add a proper keyboard, but they are interesting multi-function devices.

Nokia recently launched the quite humorous www.greatpockets.com web site, which features a mythical Saville Row tailor Henry Needle & Sons who designs men's and women's clothing with, ah, great big pockets in which they can load all their bulky …

MySQL Users Conference was a great success.
Oh, screw that.
I don't actually think it was. I just keep hearing this sentence in announcements and press-releases year after year and my structure-seeking brain classified the sentence as a set phrase. But the conference was okay. Good tracks, decent food, a lot of new engineers from our new and numerous storage engine building partners. I don't know if it was good value for the money, since I didn't have pay a dime - I was a speaker, and the conference organizers paid the admission fee for me, while the company covered the expenses. But it certainly was a good use of time.

I've had a very good day today.
I don't stop and think and say that to myself very often.

Despite all the driving, sitting, bad spicy food and me voluntarily suffering while pretending I can be a vegetarian, I feel that it was a day worth to live.

In the morning we had to drive over 90 miles to Linuxfest Northwest 2007 and despite long distance and apparent unimportance of the conference it was just the right kind of American experience I like to have.

People were coming there with their kids to listen to talks about Zope and Python and find out more about basics of the General Public License. Presenters whose profile seemed to be too high for this conference, like BrianA and BradFitz seemed to be at home and at ease. Seeing these two kinds together is part of the American society I've always been pleased with.

Nothing …