I will be presenting Care and Feeding of a MySQL Server for Linux Adminstrators twice in August. The first is August 2nd at the Oracle Office in Frisco, Texas at 4:30 PM (Suite 300 ,7640 Warren Parkway, Frisco, TX). We will have refreshments, door prizes, and a discussion about having a meeting (or two) in the Irving office.

Come be cool with us!

The second will be August 19th, in Plaza B, Hyatt Regency Vancouver at 3PM at Linuxcon North America.

This presentation developed from requests from Linux Administrators who know MySQL runs great on commodity hardware. But they want to make sure that they get their servers set up to get the best possible performance. This is a presentation to turn anyone into a DBA after forty minutes. But it will help a Linux admin create the foundation for great MySQL servers. Topics …

Most analytical and BI databases have date dimension table(s). One frequently needs to generate and populate such data. I present a solution below for such data generation, written in Python. Please use different database drivers/modules to connect to your specific database server (MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, etc.) for data population.

Notes:

1. It takes 2 parameters, start date and end date, in YYYYMMDD format, inclusive. Extensive error checking is built in, but let me know if you have comments/suggestions;

2. The script produce a Python dictionary (associated array) and print out its content;

3. The output includes dayNumber: a day’s position in a year. For example, 2011-02-01 is the 32ed day in 2011, therefore its dayNumber is 32;

4. The output includes weekNumber: a week’s position in a year. The week number in year is based on ISO standard. From documentation: the ISO year consists of 52 or 53 …

Open Cloud Initiative launches. HP joins OpenStack. Oracle releases Java 7. And more.

# The Open Cloud Initiative launched to drive open standards in cloud computing.

# HP announced its support for OpenStack.

# Oracle announced the availability of Java SE 7. The Apache Software Foundation warned of index corruption and crashes in Apache Lucene and Solr.

# Nebula …

I wrote last year about the way Google’s Android mobile operating system was serving as a more open alternative to Apple’s iOS, but not so open that it didn’t leave opportunity for an even more open alternative.

Given that we continue to see software patent-based attacks on Android, as well as swirling FUD around coverage of the attacks and never ending suits and settlements and courtroom developments, it is clear it will be a long time before any of this legal business is ever close to settled, unless ended by settlements first, which is likely.

However, I’m more interested in the technology in the meantime. I also think it’s interesting to see, if not a ‘more open’ …

CloudBees raises $10.5m. Microsoft commits $100m to SUSE. And more.

# CloudBees secured $10.5m in Series B venture funding.

# Microsoft renewed its vows with Attachmate’s SUSE business unit, committing to invest $100m in new SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates over the next four years.

# Oracle announced that it has acquired Ksplice, twhioch offers zero downtime update technology for Linux.

# Ingres announced that Steve Shine has been named Chief Executive Officer and President.

# Dell …

It happens that sometimes you need to access a remote box which supports ssh key authentication. Recently I was trying to reproduce a bug related to SSH public key authentication, so here I would like to share some of my experience.

There will be no explanation of the public key authentication itself here, rather the actual setup and steps to have a public key auth for Windows(client) -> Linux(server) working. Why Windows you would ask? Because interactions for Linux->Linux and for Mac OS X -> Linux simply work using the Unix way, while for Windows you may need some extra actions to do.

Setup

What I had at endpoints:

• Linux –

Ubuntu 11.04, sshd is set up to deny password auth.
Windows – well, it is an XP SP3 i386 box. MySQL Workbench 5.2.34+ is installed

First of all I created an encrypted pair of RSA keys, …

I hope everyone is enjoying summertime, at least in the northern hemisphere. I’m about to head out to the pool, but before I go, here is a summary of this week’s blog posts.

1. Introduction to Perl interface for Monitis API
Monitis announces a simple way to access its API through Perl, a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. This post demonstrates some examples for using the API with Perl and describes some of the benefits of the programming language. The source can be found on our Github page.

2. 101 Tips to MySQL Tuning and Optimization …

getopts
The getopts command simplifies the task of validating and parsing command line options and arguments for your shell scripts.

Syntax:

getopts <optstring name> [arg...]

Example:

Step1: First I define all my option holding variables.

ListFiles=0
MoveFiles=0
email=""

Step2: While loop.

The following while statement loops through all the options and sets them to the corresponding variable. getopts returns true while there are options to be processed. The argument string, here "lme:h", specifies which options the script accepts. If the user specifies an option which is not in this string, it will go into * section which will display a help to use this script with examples. If the option is succeeded by a colon, the value immediately following the option is …

Virtualizing all parts of today’s software infrastructure has become a priority for many. Creating a more flexible and dynamic environment with improved availability enables organizations to accelerate innovation, reduce time to market, cut costs and deliver higher uptime.

Databases have rarely been the first candidates for virtualization – mainly as a result of fears in consolidating such critical resources, and in I/O overhead that may have degraded service levels. However with improvements in hypervisor designs coupled with more powerful commodity server hardware and repeatable best practices, many of these concerns are rapidly diminishing.

It was in this context that we began development of the Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, making the world’s leading web database radically simpler to deploy, manage, and support in a virtualized environment.

Along with the development team, we will be hosting a …

A herd of Hadoop announcements. Rockmelt raises $30m. And more.

A herd of Hadoop announcements
# Yahoo! and Benchmark Capital confirmed the formation of Hortonworks, an independent company focused on the development and support of Apache Hadoop.

# Cloudera announced the availability of Cloudera Enterprise 3.5 and the launch of Cloudera SCM Express, based on the new Service and Configuration Manager in Cloudera Enterprise 3.5.

# MapR …