Michal Hrušecký

Original title was 'MySQL dropped from openSUSE!!!'. I wanted to have some shocking title, but I changed it as I don't really want to scare you so much But it is partially true, there is no mysql package in openSUSE anymore. But of course we DID NOT really dropped MySQL. In fact, we now have more MySQL in openSUSE then we ever had! Do I got your attention? Read on

What and why?

What really happened is that I renamed original MySQL package. Now it is called mysql-community-server. If you take a look at SUN/Oracle web, they call it like this for a long time, so it makes a little sense... As a result, there is no real package called mysql in openSUSE anymore. But mysql-community-server provides mysql so even if you try to install mysql, it will work. This change also have one funny consequence. Do you remember package mysql-client? Now it's called mysql-community-server-client

Why such a change? I haven't done something like this just because such a little difference in the naming of packages. No, I had some other plans as well. Reason to rename original MySQL package was to provide some space for other possible mysql providers. And we have them in 11.3! These other providers are MariaDB and MySQL Cluster. So now you can choose which MySQL do you want And as all of them provides the same symbol, namely mysql, you can use whichever you want to satisfy dependencies. But the default one is still mysql-community-server. So if you don't need anything special, nearly nothing changed for you.

Alternatives

So let's take a brief look at what MySQL Community Server alternatives do we now have in openSUSE...

MariaDB

MariaDB is a backward compatible, drop-in replacement branch of the MySQL Database Server. That means that differences in the user interface are minimal. You probably wouldn't even notice on the first sight if they get replaced. So what are the differences? The best way is to read official page about differences:

http://askmonty.org/wiki/MariaDB_versus_MySQL

Basically MariaDB incorporates many community provided patches out there and some more bleeding edge storage engines. If you want to try it, you can simply type

zypper in mariadb

And zypper will take care of conflicts and replace your MySQL with Maria. If you want to get back to MySQL, it's similarly simple, just use

zypper in mysql-community-server

MySQL Cluster

Other MySQL alternative is MySQL Cluster. This should provide real clustering support for MySQL. And it is also distributed and maintained by Oracle. If you are interested in HA, you have many servers, you might be interested in this. For more information check official web (we included version 7.0 in 11.3):

http://www.mysql.com/products/database/cluster/

If you want to try it, you can simply type

zypper in mysql-cluster

And zypper will take care of conflicts and replace your ordinary MySQL with MySQL Cluster. If you want to get back to MySQL, it's similarly simple, just use

zypper in mysql-community-server

Few weeks ago I was at FOSDEM.  It was really amazing experience. I meet many interesting people, learned quite some thing and I returned full of enthusiasm. Open Source events are really great.

But all the fun wasn't over even after the FOSDEM. I spent few more days in Bruxelles attending MySQL packagers meeting organized by SUN/Oracle. We spent quite some time talking to each other. We learned what MySQL people are doing and how. And they learned how do we deal with MySQL and what is troubling us. And many good things will come from this.

First but certainly not last of them is about to appear now. One very interesting thing we learned at meeting was MySQL release policy. What openSUSE and Ubuntu and maybe some others are doing is that after release date there is generaly no version updates allowed. We are only fixing serious bugs and security related issues. It takes quite some work. What we learned is that new releases in stable branch of MySQL are in fact maintanance updates. If you update from 5.1.43 to 5.1.44 you wouldn't get any new features. All you will get are bugfixes. And only bugfixes of serious or security related issues. Does it sound familiar? Yes it is the same thing we are doing! So I discussed it with our maintanance team. And we came to the conclusion that we want to give our users all serious fixes. Not only these few selected. And the best way to do it is to use maintanance updates provided by MySQL people themself. I'm not saying that I don't have enough confidence to play with MySQL sources, but I think that MySQL people can do it better

Yes, you are guessing right. What I'm trying to say is that we are going to update MySQL to the latest available version. This means 5.1.44 for openSUSE 11.2 and 5.0.90 for older openSUSE. We will start with 11.2 as version gap is smaller there and if everything will proceed smoothly, we will continue with 11.1 and 11.0. For 11.2 you can help by testing update. Currently 5.1.44 update is prepared for 11.2 in server: database: STABLE and I'm running some final tests. If you want, you can try it too (not recomended on production servers yet) and if you'll find any problems, please report them before it will hit official updates.

Remember, this is just the beginning. I've got some bigger plans regarding MySQL in 11.3

I already mentioned this repository several times on my blog. It is the repository where I'm trying to keep bleeding edge stuff for MySQL. I've been updating it recently and we've got new package there and some interesting updates I want to mention.

MariaDB and MySQL

First thing to mention is that this repository contains MariaDB builds. MariaDB is fork of MySQL and their goals are certainly interesting. For list of differences, try upstream page. As I consider it interesting, I'm keeping eye on it Maybe our users may benefit from it. But currently it is also a source of possible problems in this repository as it contains MySQL as well. I tried to modify both packages in such a manner that both provide mysql and conflict with each other. It should be possible for user to decide which "mysql" he wants. But as I'm still trying to test it and improve it, it may still contain some glitches. But I pushed it here, so you can try it and help to make it perfect. Currently available versions in this repository are MariaDB version 5.1.41 and MySQL version 5.5.1. You can decide which one do you want to try by installing either 'mariadb' package or 'sun-mysql' package. If you encounter any problems, please let me know. And as always, backup while you still have something to backup

MySQL Workbench

Other thing that was updated is MySQL Workbench which is now available in this repository in version 5.2.14. Again, even Sun considers this version beta, so be cautious. But I really like it. It combines together previous Workbench and Administrator (I think even Query tool, but I didn't used that one too much). It has nice and shiny GUI and it definitely worths trying. It is a huge difference against version present in openSUSE 11.2 not mentioning older releases. But I'm keeping here 5.2 branch of MySQL Workbench for some time already so maybe you already noticed

Other builds

Maybe you also noticed, that MySQL is getting build in our Build Service not only for various SUSE distribution but also for RedHat, Fedora and CentOS. Same applies in serveratabase:UNSTABLE repository and therefore not only MySQL but also MariaDB is getting build here for these distribution. Lately I tried to figure out dependencies for MySQL Workbench and I succeeded in building that for Fedora too (It would be too difficult to support RedHat or CentOS). That's great thing about openSUSE Build Service. It encourages you to build your packages even for non-SUSE people. But as I don't have these distributions anywhere, these builds are even less tested then SUSE ones. But if you want to try them and report errors you encounter, feel free to do so

Link

Last thing to mention is URL where you can find everything I wrote about in this post. And here it is, just choose your distribution

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/server:/database:/UNSTABLE/

It's been some time already since I informed you about server: database: UNSTABLE repository in openSUSE Build Service. Today I want to mention what is going on there. As the name of the repository suggests, it's probably not the best idea to use anything from here on your production servers

MySQL 5.4

I'm keeping there MySQL 5.4. Currently in version 5.4.3 beta. 5.4 branch of MySQL contains some patches to improve performance. That is the reason why it might be interesting. Downside is that it isn't released as often as 5.1 and it is not considered production ready. I already wrote something about this, so let's move to something new.

MySQL Workbench 5.2.8

What can be more interesting is that this repository also contains the newest version of MySQL Workbench. Have you ever used MySQL Administrator or MySQL Query Browser? These tools will die soon. Even versions in 11.2 are some kind of zombies on sedatives. All functionality provided before by MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser should be provided by MySQL Workbench 5.2 in the future. MySQL Workbench already reached beta stage with current version. And it can be found in server: database: UNSTABLE repository. On first sight it look quite nice. I didn't played with it more deeply, just checked that it is basically working, but you can I tried few things with Administrator plugin, but I will investigate it more deeply and then write something about it.

Last note, to get some more attention screenshot of the main window

We are going to release openSUSE 11.2 soon, so I want to let you know about one problem you may expect. One of the openSUSE 11.2 features is support for ext4. Well, if you will just click on next all the time during the installation, default filesystem for your root partition will be ext4. What is the problem with that? Well, ext4 in current kernel has barriers enabled by default. It's not a problem, it's a feature, but it has some unpleasant side effects which you may encounter. Let's take a closer look.

Barriers

Barriers are used to make sure that journal is really written to your filesystem and that nothing is missing. It has one big advantage - your data are safe. On the other hand it has disadvantage as well. You have to make sure that everything is written so you can't really take full advantage of all caches and such. There is a nice article on LWN.net about barriers.

Consequences

Well and why I mention it? Barriers has some impact on performance. Sometimes this impact can be quite notable as mentioned in bug #549534. This bug was about importing some sample 1.6M SQL dump into MySQL. One friend reported this to me on IRC. On ext4 with barriers enabled this import takes 527 seconds. But after disabling barriers on the same machine same SQL dump can be imported in 21 seconds. So if you plan using MySQL for some large and heavily used database and you have UPS or something similar you may consider disabling it.

Disabling barriers

So if you want to disable barriers, you ca easily do so by using barrier=0 in mount options. You can do it by adding this option after comma to the fourth column in your /etc/fstab. Or if you want something user friendlier, run 'yast2 disk', select your partition, using right click choose to Edit it and in following dialog use Fstab Options to invoke another dialog. In Fstab Options dialog, enter barrier=0 to the Arbitrary option value field. If you can't find it, follow the screenshot or run YaST in English by using 'LANG=C yast2 disk'.