inotify is a handy standard Linux kernel tool to track file access/writes under a live server.

How to simulate loads on MySQL servers using Proxy and MockLoad

We all love graphs. We all love SQL hacks. We all know the SQL hack which displays a character-based graph (example follows for those unfamiliar). But we all love horizontal graphs, not vertical ones. We are used to the X axis being horizontal, Y being vertical. Not vice versa. In this post I’ll present a SQL hack which rotates a vertical graph to horizontal. In fact, the technique shown will rotate any ‘textual image’; but graphs are a nice example.

Very insightful article about how MySQL Cluster achieves fault tolerance and high availability.

In one of the servers we have an issue that happens to one of the servers that some items that have the status of "freeing items" and "Sending data" are just stuck there, causing a lot of locks on the server, and the load of the server drops to almost 0. The server then wouldn't restart, and the only solution is to kill the mysqld process, and fix the crashed tables that result from the kill.

I’ve been working on various different MySQL related issues and maintenance procedures some of which have not gone according to plan. Here is a recipe that may help you avoid wasting a lot of time, especially if your database is large.

Lua script for Workbench to add relationships based on column names

A quick introduction into MapReduce.

There is a cool option for mysqlbinlog for disabling the binary log when doing recovery using binary logs, namely --disable-log-bin. There are various ways for doing this.

Keeping good database backups is crucial because unpredictable disastrous events always occurs. In web-based business – backup is a critical component. There exist different open-source scripts, that could help to organize the database backup process in a customized and easy way, avoiding use of mysqldump (default MySQL backup tool). This article describes various open-source scripts that can help a newbie sysadmin to organize MySQL backup process.

The title says it all, and the explanation is very interesting. The consequences of disabling binlog due to lack of storage are catastrophic. Entertaining and worrying at the same time.

This article describes the physical difference between the INT and BIGINT datatypes, and shows how selecting the correct datatype can provide a more space efficient disk storage for your MySQL Data.

MySQL users often dream about a more powerful yet stable database server. They want a server with more features, like expanding macros, customized logging, access to shell commands, access to live tables from other DBMS. Every feature, given enough development time, can be eventually implemented, but users want them now, with the current GA server. It can be done. Using a proxy server, some of those dreams come true. Today.

This article explains how to test the performance of a large database with MySQL 5.1, showing the advantages of using partitions. The test database uses data published by the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Currently, the data consists of ~ 113 million records (7.5 GB data + 5.2 GB index).

Since you're reading this, you probably know that Sun is switching to the Bazaar version control system for all development work on the MySQL server. Unlike the version control system that we've been using previously, Bazaar is an open source project and freely available to anyone. This means that it is now much easier to follow ongoing development, or even to participate in it! On the downside, just like our previous tool, Bazaar is not quite as straight-forward as traditional version control systems such as CVS or subversion. The aim of this article is to give an overview and a general idea of how to set up Bazaar, how to access the MySQL server source code repositories, and the basic commands for working with the source code.

The MySQL project switched from Bitkeeper to another revision control system, Bazaar, in June 2008. My colleague Daniel Fischer wrote an excellent article describing how to get MySQL's code by using Bazaar, and how to compile a MySQL server binary from this. Here I am going to build on this knowledge and take it further, to show you how to modify MySQL's code for your needs, and share your modifications.

When I joined MySQL back in June of 2005, one of the first “MySQL Truths” I learned and repeated often when discussing MySQL with others was “release early, release often.” If you’ve been using MySQL for any length of time, you know what that statement means – it meant that MySQL was: (1) dedicated to getting new features and enhancements into the hands of its community so the software’s quality could be validated; (2) eager to take early feedback on those features so the input could rapidly be incorporated back into the product allowing everyone to benefit; (3) committed to very frequent releases of the software so helpful new features and/or external contributions that were ready for action could quickly be put into play and not sit idle on the shelf. And if you’ve been around Open Source for a while now, you know this is the spirit in which most providers of Open Source software operate.

A list of three cautions when moving to cloud computing (Amazon EC2).

There are various setups and solutions to solve the problem of having redundant mysql masters and scaling writes on them. MySQL Cluster can be an alternative. MySQL Cluster can effectively do what DRBD and MySQL Replication do in a HA MySQL setup. But better.

An introduction to Gearman (a client/server infrastructure for distributed workers) and its practical application to replication setup. By combining the ease of use of MySQL Sandbox and the flexibility of Gearman, you can ger remote replication setup with low risk of mistakes.