Everything is a Freaking DNS problem

Over at the OPenARK blog Shlomi Noach argues that using apt-get or yum to install your MySQL instance will one day most likeley break your MySQL setup. Depdendencies, distros not shipping the MySQL version you want to use and on some distro's indeed the mysql vs MySQL issue, agreed, it all makes things less trivial.

However why give up a clean packaged system if there are other ways out ?

First of all by claiming that such an installation can break a working production environment looks to me like admitting you don't have a split development, production environment and that rather than testing stuff upfront indeed you just hack a long in production.

So rather than using a tarball for the MySQL instance an --force to satisfy the missing dependencies (hence also cluttering your system) , a much cleaner and less error prone setup is to only deploy from your own , self controlled repository , in which you only allow tested packages, most probably not the distro based package , hence packages that won't break your setups ;) But still you will be using apt or yum and deploying rpm's and debs , perfectly satisfying dependency needs.

Apart from that .. watch out for Banquise .. :) Coming to your favourite distro soon..

Technorati Tags: apt apt-get banquise deb mysql rpm yum

I would like to point the crowd to the Call For Presentaions of Loadays. , the Linux Open Administration Days .

The Linux Open Administration days 2010 will be the first edition of a new conference focusing on Linux and Open Administration, we are trying to fill a gap for System Engineers and Administrators using Open Source technologies"

More details on the Linux Open Administration Days site

I'll probably be there .. given the fact that the event will be 5 minutes from where I live .

Technorati Tags: antwerpen cfp conference drupal mysql opensource presentation talk tstad wilrijk

Fosdem 2010 was my 10th fosdem Edition (including the first OSDEM)
As every year Fosdem suffered even more from it's own success.

On Friday evening ther was the obligatory Beer event... however as people need to eat to .. the Devops crowd fled the scene

I had made reservations for a 20 something group and with the CentOS crowd joining us (as there was some overlap anyhow) we were 25 when we arrived in the restaurant .

Dinner and Discussions were great .. I learned about some new projects and we had some insightfull dicussions on how fat your thin foil should be ...

After dinner we went back to the Beer Event were lots of Free Beer was tasted ...

Saturday was the first full day of Fosdem, as usual Fosdem was the victim of it's own success , too much interresting stuff to see .. too little time.

Lots of Devrooms had the "FULL" sign put up more than you want as a visitor ...
I never even made it into the Drupal or NoSQL rooms :(

Sadly I had to correct Ploum's first law but for a lot of people .. Fosdem each time means the battle choosing which presentation you'll go to ... If you can even make it to the talk .. as usually the the hallway track is much more interresting :)

The MySQL devroom was on sunday but on saturday the crowd met in an Italian place nearby the Fosdem campus to get to know each other and chat a lot ..
The discussions ranged from French vs Canadaian and the future of Forks

During Saturday afternoon @patrickdebois suggested a Devops Meetup for Breakfast ... and some how that also happened ...

When I arrived at Fosdem on sunday morning they were still there :)

I spent the biggest part of Sunday in and around the MySQL devroom listening to a bunch of interresting talks

My own talk went fairly well given the time constraint .. sqeezing content for an hour in 20 minutes means you can't really go deep into the topics ...
My initial plan was to only focus on Pacemaker integration however the community had voted for the overview talk :)

After my own talk it was almost time to head to the Janson auditorium for the Footnote of Greg Kroah-Hartman, and as on any Fosdem .. there once again had to be Beer

Technorati Tags: devops drupal fosdem mysql nosql open source

I know the biggest part of my fanclub already booked tickets for my upcoming presentations, but the other 2 might want to check their calendars to see if they aren't missing out on the good stuff :)

Next Sunday I`ll giving a shortish overview of MySQL HA alternatives in the MySQL and Friends devroom at Fosdem.

March will bring me to Manchester again for the UKUUG Spring conference where I`ll be giving a longer version of that presentation with a strong focus on integrating with PaceMaker, and automating the whole boostrap procedure of a HA setup.

Early may will bring me to Ede in the Netherlands where I`ll be telling the crowds at the NLUUG spring conference, about their new fancy jobtitles, as all the Systeembeheerders there will have to become Devministrators, or Devops if you prefer ...

Apart from my talks also watch out for LoadAys , PuppetCamp Europe, OpsCamp Europe and maybe a Real CloudCamp in Belgium :)

And I`m not the only Inuit on Tour,

Technorati Tags: conference devops devopsdays fanclubsarcasm mysql nluug opensource opscamp puppetcamp ukuug

Fosdem is coming up again .. It's going to be the 10th edition already So it's going to be 2 days and nights of fun, tech and geek stuff

Lenz already posted the announcement , but allow me to recapitulate.

The MySQL & Friends meetup is on saturday evening , we'll meet around 1900 in front of the under the big tree in front of the AW building...

As with the Devops Meetup you can once again vote for your preferred food

The crowd voted and Favoured an Italian place , so I've made reservations for a 15+ persons group at Sogno d'Italia which is walking distance from the conference location, so there'wont be any hassle with cars and transport

The schedule for the Devroom is also already available

See u there :)

Technorati Tags: drupal fosdem mysql opensource

Lots of people writing about Snorkle again today ,Monty Says, help saving MySQL

He gives us different options, a , b or c .. but I , and some others, want an option d

No I don't trust Oracle, it's not like they have been a very good Open Source Citizen, yes they contribute to the kernel and other projects but my feeling says it's only because they have to (Kernel, Xen and others ) not because they Want to (thinking about Unfakable etc) , if they would really want to they probably would work with the CentOS community more etc, and as Monty mentions their InnoDB track record could be better.

But on the other hand I don't think the EU should block the deal because Monty wants his baby back , cheap , as honestly imvho that's what they really want, be able to buy MySQL back for a nice price, either beceause Oracle is being forced by the EU to split up Sun, or eventually the deal doesn't come trough and they can buy MySQL back when Sun really goes belly up (which is what probably happens when option a) is chosen.

According to CNN , Oracle has made some pledges about MySQL earlier today.
My main question there however is about the Opposite of option 5. which is exactly what created the problem.

5. Support not mandatory. Customers will not be required to purchase support services from Oracle as a condition to obtaining a commercial license to MySQL.

Yes we want support, but no we don't want a commercial license with it, we want support on the GPL version, which is a problem lots of Open Source vendors struggle with , some of them
force people wanting to buy support to go for the commercial license. And it is exaclty that upselling that got MySQL in the troubles it has today .

Josh Berkus has a point declaring
Dual Licensing dead, just as I he sees much more future in the Percona like model than in the Dual License model MySQL used to have ..

Dries points to one of the comments on
Lukas Kahwe Smith 's Come On Money er Monty article stating
Monty walks away with several millions in hard cash, while [PHP +] MySQL cheerleaders who bet on "MySQL" franchise only walk away with a cute dolphin T-shirt

Which makes me wonder when I`ll be getting a nice Acquia T-shirt :)

Technorati Tags: acquia drupal eu mysql open source oracle php snorkle

The 10th edition of Fosdem is getting closer, yes .. I said 10 ,10 decimal that means ten, not two :)

It's kinda hard to imagine that this is actually going to be my 10th fosdem , it feels weird ..

Anyhow.. Lenz just announced a call for participation for the MySQL and Friends devroom.

I`m guessing a talk on .LolSQL might be a good fit for the "and Friends" part.

58 days to Fosdem ... !

Technorati Tags: devrooms fosdem mysql

No I did NOT post the following comment

This is ridiculous. You didn't test MySQL, you tested a failing DNS lookup on authentication.

resulting in the follow up post :

My previous post Redis, Memcache, Tokyp Tyrant, MySQL comparison had a flaw as pointed out by this comment. The MySQL was taking a huge time for doing a reverse DNS lookup.

But as always ... Everything is just a Freaking dns problem :)

Technorati Tags: dns dnsproblem mysql nosql

by @botchagalupe
on Virtualization, Open Source tools and DNS Problems

Technorati Tags: dnsproblem drupal ha heartbeat linux-ha mysql pacemaker puppet virtualization xen

Funny how different experiences lead to different evaluations of tools. The MySQL HA solutions the MySQL Performanceblog list, are almost listed in the complete opposited order of what my impressions are.

Ok agreed, I should probably not put my MySQL NDB experiences from 2-3 years ago with multiple Query of deaths and more problems than you into account anymore , but back then went in the list Less stable than a single node. I've had NDB POC setups going down for much more than 05:16 minutes
Ndb comes with a lot of restrictions, there are

As for MySQL on DRBD, I've said this before , I love DRBD, but having to wait for a long InnoDB recovery after a failover just kills your uptime ,
I remember being called by a customer during Fred last holiday who was waiting over 20 minutes for recovery , twice, so putting the DRBD/San setup second would not be my preference. But agreed .. it's only listed at 99.9% meaning almost 9 hours of downtime per year are allowed.

On the other hand we've seen database uptime of MySQL MultiMaster setups with Heartbeat reaching better figures than 99.99% Heck I've seen single nodes achieve better than 99.99% :)

So what does this teach us ... there is no golden rule for HA, lots of situations are different, it's the preferences of the customer, the size of the database, the kind of application , and much
more .. you always need to think and evaluate the environment ...

Technorati Tags: cluster drbd ha linux-ha mysql nines