Thanks for the Drupalcon Thank Yous — Texas Linux Fest and Southeast Linuxfest

Thank you for all of you who dropped by the MySQL booth at Drupalcon to say ‘Thank you’ for MySQL. At every show there are several folks who do this but at Drupalcon it seemed like half the 3,000 attending dropped by to say ‘thanks’, grab MySQL stickers, OurSQL Poscasts disks, and talk about MySQL 5.6. I’ll see all y’all next year in Austin.

Speaking of Austin, the Texaslinuxfest.org is this weekend. I will be talking Saturday in Track D at 11:25 on the Proper Care and Feeding of a MySQL Database.

And the FREE Southeast Linux Fest is June 7-9 in Charlotte. This year featuring a ‘Zero to DBA’ track to get all you who want to become Database Administrators started on the correct foot. Hear Chris Pettus, Perter Zeitsev, Craig Slyvester, Ryan Lowe, Max Mether, me and many more.

Keeping your Drupal from Drooping — part 1

This is the first screen after a sucessful Drupal 7.22 install.

Drupal is a content management system that runs at least 2.1% of all websites(1). It is easy to use, extensable with over 20,000 add-ons, and runs beautifully with a LAMP stack.

At the heart of most Drupal sites is a MySQL database with, as of Version 7.22, 76 tables. Recently I was asked what needs to be done to a ‘generic’ Drupal to get it running on MySQL 5.6. It is a very easy update that provides better performance, security, and allows access to the newest MySQL 5.6 updates.

For this example, the generic box is a two CPU Dell x86_64 box running Centos 6.4. This is fairly typical of what a low-end hosted system from one of the many web hosting businesses a small busines might rent. Centos 6.4 was installed.

Now to use Yum to get the with the default versions of Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Sadly the MySQL provided is 5.1.69 not 5.6 (out for a month or so) or even 5.5 (two years since GA status). We will upgrade MySQL later.

yum -y install mysql-server httpd php php-mysql wget

chkconfig httpd on
chkconfig mysqld on

/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/httpd start


Next we need to create a database for Drupal’s use. This is how it can be down from a Linux shell for those shy on using the MySQL client program.

echo 'CREATE DATABASE drupal;' | mysql
echo "GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, LOCK TABLES, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON drupal.* TO 'drupal'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'drupal';" | mysql
echo "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql

Now to get Drupal installed. Make sure your Apache DocRoot is where you install the software.

cd /var/www/html/
wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.22.tar.gz
tar -xzf drupal-7.22.tar.gz --strip-components=1
rm drupal-7.22.tar.gz
chown -R apache.apache .

cp ./sites/default/default.settings.php ./sites/default/settings.php


Now Drupal can be configured using a web browser. Be sure to plug in your infromation from the GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO ‘drupal’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘drupal’; step for you database name, user and password. You should see something similar to the graphic at the top of this post.

So now we have a fairly generic Drupal installation that is ready to upgraded to MySQL 5.6 and next time the upgrade steps will be detailed as well as some upgrade methodologies that need to be considered.

1. See http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Drupal

Install Tricks

Installing MySQL is a simple process. It is very common on a modern Windows machine to install in under three minutes. The Windows Installer Team have really increased the speed in the last few releases. But what if you are running Linux?

For the very fussy who want everything tailored ‘just so’, download the source code and configure exactly what you want. Don’t need Serbian character sets, different collations, or some storage engines you never use? Then read up on Installing MySQL from Source. With a bit of time and fuss, you can have a minimalist server that contains only the components you need. This is not recommended unless you know you can lock down the system and never, ever need to ad more components on the fly.

Next comes the MySQL Binaries. Untar/Zip the file from Dev.MySQl.Com, point your config files to the correct places, and run mysqld_safe. Read Installing MySQL from Generic Binaries on Unix/Linux for the details. This is my personal favorite as I can have several versions installed and change versions by starting the server for that version. The /usr/local of my test server has a version of 5.1, two versions of 5.5, and four versions of 5.6 available. Be sure to make your startup scripts point to /usr/local/mysql and that directory is linked to the version you want to use.

Finally comes the packages. Both let you leave much of the worry of software inconsistencies into package management software. This makes upgrades easier. However some distro are s-l-o-w about getting the latest and greatest MySQL packaged for their flavor. So please take a look at the packages from Dev.MyQL.Com rather than wait. Peruse Installing MySQL on Linux before you begin.

Next time we will cover initial configuration and start up.

MySQL.Com logins transitioning to Oracle SSO

The old MySQL.com logins will go away on Wednesday, December 19th and will be replaced by the Oracle Single Sign On (SSO).

This Oracle SSO will replace the old MySQL.Com login starting December 20th.

So what do you do? Go to Oracle.com and login. If your account was migrated you will be able to login. But the crimson invalid login message will require you to set up a new account. Some may be wary of providing more personal information. But this is being done to bring the MySQL.com web sites into compliance with our corporate rules and provide a better flow for those of you using more than one Oracle product.

Q: Will this affect voting statistics on Plant.MySQL.Com?
A: Probably. The run away leaders have been Giuseppe Maxia and Mark Callaghan, by very wide margins.

Q: Can I re-register with my old email and password if my account was not moved?
A: Yes.

Q: Can I opt out of sharing my information?
A: Yes, you pick how much information you want to share with Oracle or third parties.