OurDelta - Builds for MySQL

If you start with the d6 build, you probably have ourdelta.org in your repo files rather than mirror.ourdelta.org. Since we moved to using download mirrors, you need to update your repo config files. There are redirects in place for download users, but yum/apt-get generally don’t like redirects. For details on what your config should now look like, just take a peek at the information for each distro we currently support:

• RHEL/CentOS (4 & 5)
• Debian (4.0 Etch)
• Ubuntu (8.04 LTS Hardy, 8.10 Intrepid)

This week saw the release of OurDelta patchset d7 build of MySQL 5.0.67, basically a cleaned-up update of the earlier (and first) OurDelta d6 build. The number of downloads/fetches within the first few hours surpassed the total number from the previous weeks.

Downloads and yum/apt-get repository fetches now always go via one of our mirrors, as obviously the main server can’t possibly handle all that attention! By default you just get sent to “somewhere on the planet”, although you can tweak your repo setup to only use specific mirrors. If you want to become a mirror for OurDelta, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to add you in; the more the merrier!

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid is now also supported. We welcome input on which additional platforms are desirable.

There was a podcast, where interviewer James Purser came up with an good description of what OurDelta is: “a new distro for MySQL”.

Lead of the Drizzle project Brian Aker (Sun Microsystems), briefly hopped through Arjen’s home town of Brisbane Australia, and they had a chat about where and how we can work together on stuff.

OurDelta development in the coming weeks will focus on 5.1. If you would like to get involved with this particular effort, join the ourdelta-developers group on Launchpad, and check out the recent mailing list archive. There’s more to it than just code; but getting started there is not as hard as it seems, and there’s plenty of helpful hands about!

James Purser of Open Source on the Air has done a podcast interview with Arjen Lentz about OurDelta, describing it as “a new distro for MySQL”.

Alrighty, my mistake. In the setup of the mirror infrastructure, I stuffed up the server alias logic so that some yum and apt-get requests will be failing at the moment (specifically on the us mirrors). The uk mirror should be ok. Either temporarily override your config for the uk mirror, or wait a few hours as things gets sorted on those systems. Sorry!

Update: all fixed now - and it seems the mirror people are smarter than I anyway

We’ll get some testing and monitoring in place for this kind of thing, it’s obviously very tricky to spot such problems otherwise.

OurDelta build for MySQL 5.0.67 with patchset d7 is now available, in source (new!) and packaged binaries for RHEL/CentOS 4 and 5, Debian 4.0 Etch, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy) and (new!) Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid).

If you already installed the OurDelta repository information, yum update or apt-get upgrade will install the updated packages for you. Please do review the special notes on backward compatibility below.

Fixes & Additions:

• Fixed up all backward compatibility and reserved keyword issues. You can now drop in an OurDelta build to replace a stock version. Generally this merely involved some minor changes to various patches; however Arjen worked on the MicroSlow patch so that it now accepts and returns fractional seconds. This makes it backward compatible with the stock MySQL. Percona has indicated it will also move to this new version of the patch.
• Note: if you are upgrading from the OurDelta 5.0.67.d6 build, or any of the earlier Percona builds, you will need to adjust your long_query_time from microseconds to fractional seconds. (This should be the only time we needed to do this, e.g. break something to unbreak things
• Added Mirrored Binlog and Fast Master Promotion patches (by Google, extracted by Percona).
• Added KILL IF IDLE and InnoDB Freeze patches (by Google, extracted by David Stainton, Spinn3r), now in a public build for the very first time!
• Added updated “innodb_rw_locks” patch (by Yasufumi Kinoshita); only in -Sail binary.
• Added new “adaptive flush of InnoDB buffer pool” patch (by Percona); only in -Sail binary.
• Bugfix “variables out-of-bounds on 32-bit” aka BIG_TABLES (launchpad#284123, mysqlbug#35346) by Antony Curtis.
• Bugfix “mysqld_safe open_files_limit” (launchpad#290190, mysqlbug#40368) by Erik Ljungstrom.
• Improved build process: creating patched source tarballs once, then feeding these into the various build machines. This means we now have those same source tarballs also available for you to download, just in case you wish to build them for another platform! Lots of script magic and time by Peter Lieverdink.
• All distro packages now also have the appropriate source packages available.
• Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) builds added.
• RHEL/CentOS release RPM: further simplifies setup for YUM, with automatic mirrors and GPG key. Thanks Steve Walsh for that contribution!
• More documentation for each feature so that you know exactly which new configuration options and SQL commands you get, and how they work.
• All pages on the website now accept comments, so it’s even easier to provide corrections and other feedback on specific content pages and posts. Not intended for reporting bugs.

This week we’ve been working on…

• The re-jigged build system, so we have a single patched baseline source tarball that’s then used for all the different builds, as well as being available for you to download and build yourself.
• Noarch distro rpm for all CentOS to more easily drop repo files into YUM.
• The repo/download mirror system, it’ll be ready to go from the next build (domain/paths will change slightly). Add your name to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ourdelta/+bug/285200 if you’d like to be a mirror.
• More documentation for existing (and new) patches. Currently WordPress mucks up the tabs when inside the docs pages, if you’re a WP guru who can fix this, please get in touch!
• Fixing up existing and updated patches. We really don’t want new reserved words introduced, and if it’s absolutely necessary it should be documented. Likewise, any enhanced feature should be backwards compatible if it relates to (for instance) existing configuration options. This is nearly done, and then we’ll do a new 5.0 build. Other “new” patches are set for the next build after that.
• Porting patches for 5.1. Since we don’t want you to lose any of the new features when trying 5.1, we’re porting the 5.0 patches that don’t yet have a 5.1 version. This does require some work, more volunteers are most welcome! In some cases a port will be waiting (or needs to be synced) for the work in 5.0.
• Bugs. Arjen found a bug in MySQL’s mysqld_safe behaviour (any version since 4.0). One active community member submitted a patch very quickly. This is what happens when there’s prospect of getting a contribution included in a build reasonably quick: people feel enticed to participate. And that’s great! We now reckon the fix needs to be in my_print_defaults not mysqld_safe, but the example is still valid.
• Grabbing the new Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) images to set up build environments for it. Lots of people will stay with 8.04 LTS (Hardy) since that is a Long Term Support edition, but Intrepid is bound to be popular anyway.
• Pondering the InnoDB recovery code. Surely this can be made faster without a major rewrite. Sure there can be rollbacks also and that’s another matter, but dealing more efficiently with the redo would make a serious difference already. Do feel free to experiment and send in your patch!

Ideas welcome!

General idea… base: Delta symbol (with thicker line on right hand side - a delta it’s not a regular triangle), plus one or more of the following:

• something depicting deltas: incremental small changes;
• something depicting a river delta: where streams come together before flowing into ocean;
• something depicting community: people working together, participating, communicating.

If you can draw even a little bit, rough scribbles are most welcome! We have a good artist who can turn that into magic. And, you don’t have to go with the above… come up with something else suitable!

See also https://bugs.launchpad.net/ourdelta/+bug/284161 where we’re tracking this; you will find other suggestions from people, including ideas that have been dismissed for visual or other reasons.

It’s been about a week since the initial launch of the first 5.0 packages and the OurDelta website, so it’s time for some first impressions and an update on what’s going on right now…

• Immediately lots of hits on the site (from 67 distinct countries), most downloads and repo retrieves started happening a few days later.
• Interest spiked even more when we put up the Debian 4.0 (Etch) packages, apparently there was serious pent-up demand there!
• Lots of positive responses from clients, user groups, global MySQL community, and in fact also from within Sun/MySQL. That’s very nice, as it provides confirmation we’re doing something worthwhile!
• No negative responses, blog posts or articles that I know of (and yes I did search around a bit through Google, Technorati, etc) which is of course nice too, but rather unusual and thus surprising. Isn’t there always someone who doesn’t agree? and anyway, a bit of dissent and discussion is healthy.
• We submitted sessions for OpenSQLCamp, the linux.conf.au Open Source Databases Miniconf, and the MySQL Conference and Expo 2009 call for papers. Not just about the project, but also about using the toolchain and delving into MySQL Server code for non-gurus.
• Noteworthy: MySQL Performance Blog is a popular site and so quite a few referrals came from Baron’s post there.
• As expected some bug reports were received, mainly to do with packaging details. Steve Walsh, Peter Lieverdink and others have been very active sorting out these issues and they’ll be included in the next builds.
• No OurDelta-related external bug reports about server operation itself, while people have reported running the builds in production. Excellent!
• The ourdelta-developers mailing list got a fair number of new participants. Do join too!
• #ourdelta IRC channel (on Freenode) not massively busy but alive and well, today Peter Lieverdink added an IRC bot to notify of OurDelta bug updates from Launchpad there, which is very useful too.
• We received kind offers for mirroring the download/repo files, James Iseppi is working on the rsync and other details for that.
• While organising our infrastructure for better patch management (Quilt) and the build workflow, we did find some bugs in existing patches. Most have been fixed, some are still being discussed. It’s nothing major but, for instance, we don’t want patches to create any new reserved words as that can break existing applications.
• The above has slowed down our upcoming release of 5.1 somewhat. The intent was to make sure that all relevant 5.0 patches would also be available for the 5.1 builds, so that an upgrade would not lose you any features you’ve now come to like! Some porting work is involved there because not all are available for 5.1. With the other bugs getting fixed first, that’s eating up some time. We believe that’s ok though, as the resulting quality is higher.
• While working on one such issue (getting rid of startup warnings from  one patch on 32-bit builds) we encountered an existing MySQL bug which had been hiding somewhat mislabeled. While the visible symptoms were benign, Antony Curtis was able to add insight to the root cause of things, which indicated that on some platform more serious problems could occur in the server. The story is essentially about old code and old platforms, but just in case, we made a patch and it’ll be in the next OurDelta build - to make sure it definitely can’t cause any trouble. All info and the patch have also been submitted to the MySQL bug, and the MySQL QA and bugs people have been very kind and helpful.
• Eric Bergen of Proven Scaling submitted a patch, and David Stainton from Spinn3r supplied two more that he’d extracted from the big Google patches.
• Other excited individuals have been delving into the repositories to play with various bits, or are doing some benchmarks. All good stuff!

Thus, you may agree, plenty going on so far and not at all bad for a first public week of a new project - and as is usually the case, a release doesn’t mean the work is done for a while, instead it immediately creates more!

This poll was posted last week on Arjen’s blog and is still open for a few more days to receive your vote. The comments on the original post contain some interesting considerations either way, and many in fact non-technical. Anyway, please add your vote, and optionally your thoughts to the comment thread!

Build for Debian Etch done and available, simply click to the new Debian page for the info to set up your repo. Thanks to Peter Lieverdink (cafuego on the #ourdelta IRC channel) for the fast work!

Your interest (from 53 different countries according to Google Analytics!) and response has been great! Among the feedback, saw a few bug reports on minor issues in the packaging, most of which have already been addressed for the next build (bug handling progress is all visible on Launchpad). And discussion about various patches that are “around”; some mails came to people directly but we try to encourage using the oursql-developers team mailing list.