I found Dennis the Menace, he now has a job as system administrator for a hosting company. Scenario: client has a problem with a server becoming unavailable (cause unknown) and has it restarted. MySQL had some page corruption in the InnoDB tablespace.

The hosting provider, being really helpful, goes in as root and first deletes ib_logfile* then ib* in /var/lib/mysql. He later says “I am sorry if I deleted it. I thought I deleted the log only. Sorry again.”  Now this may appear nice, but people who know what they’re doing with MySQL will realise that deleting the iblogfiles actually destroys data also. MySQL of course screams loudly that while it has FRM files it can’t find the tables. No kidding!

Then, while he’s been told to not touch anything any more, and I’m trying to see if I can recover the deleted files on ext3 filesystem (yes there are tools for that), he goes in again and puts an ibdata1 file back. No, …

Note: these are live notes. It was a great talk, I’d rate it as excellent (and I’m not just saying that because Josh and I work in the same group at Sun). I’ll have to also comment on his thoughts and talk, in due time. MySQL, as an open source project, has a lot to learn.

Ten Ways to Destroy Your Community
A How-To Guide
Josh Berkus, Community Guy

Part 1: The Evil of Communities

• you may attract and will be unable to get rid off a community
• they mess up your marketing plans, because the community goes out and does its own marketing and PR and distributes your software in places you didn’t expect to
• they also mess up your product plans, because they contribute to code and features to your project, with unexpected innovation!
• communities are never …