Following my successful linux.conf.au talk “Eat My Data: How Everybody Gets POSIX File I/O Wrong“, I started to feel the need to easily be able to have my data eaten.

Okay, not quite. However, when you’ve written your software properly, so it uses fsync() correctly, opening files with O_SYNC or whatever - tests take longer as you’re having to wait for things to hit the rust.

So….. LD_PRELOAD=libeatmydata.so to the rescue! With a POSIX compliant fsync() (that does nothing) and filtering on open(2), it can take your test run times down dramatically.

The only time you shouldn’t use it for your tests is when you end up crashing the machine to test durability (i.e. when the OS doesn’t have the opportunity to cleanly write out the data to disk).

See the …

I am very good at just staying up late to adjust to a timezone. I can do this fairly reliably. Going to the US and Europe can be done by this method (rather well). Coming back is another story though. Going to sleep at an earlier time (for me) doesn’t come easy. Grr…

This year, it seesm that whenever I go out for significant travel, the following things will break on my trip:

• a laptop power supply
• a disk

At least this time the disk is part of a RAID1 array.

Oh, and for some reason my mythbackend stopped doing anything a few days ago…. and I wasn’t checking it. grr… annoying. At least there’s not much on TV.

I noted earlier today in Refining MySQL Community Server
that it would be

just a matter of time and someone will start building RPM/Debian packages from the source repository.

I clearly didn't have my first cup of coffe yet when writing that as off course I forgot we already have DorsalSource

Different things can be said about
Kaj Arno's , Refining MySQL Community Server but given the fact that the source will continue to be freely available from Bitkeeper I see no issues apart from a possible growth in real community MySQL with real contributions.

In Mike Kruckenberg's article on the topic someone comments and asks how this is different from the RedHat model, I only see one difference, today we don't have a CentOS yet for MySQL .. I`m sure it's just a matter of time and someone will start building RPM/Debian packages from the source repository. (If it's not already happening today)

As long as MySQL keeps all their source code free ..

• compressed backup patch
  • actually works rather well… and restoring from compressed backup too.
  • need to modify the rate-limiting code though… may as well rate limit the writing of the *compressed* data stream… otherwise the option isn’t nearly as useful
• compressed LCP patch
  • well… the *restoring* of compressed LCPs…. can write them
• working out exactly what more information I want out of the linux memory manager to find out what kswapd is really doing (and the patch that exports the right info)
• re-jigging my procmail filters for commits@lists.mysql.com
• fixing up my offlineimap patch and getting it in upstream
• disk pre-allocation for MythTV recordings
• buying workstation
• unpacking the last few boxes around the house
• finishing this …

Today, immediately after lunch, I got IO errors from my laptop hard drive (ironically while attempting a file system dump). Words to the affect of “oh gosh and bother” exiting my mouth and the decision was made to go get a new drive.

Well… one “shortcut” to the computer store later, have new HD (will travel).

Backup from previous night, xfsrestore here I come. And a good number of hours later… about 1.5million files restored.

I do wish file systems had REPEATABLE_READ though… that would be nice.

So, probably like lots of people - i run a few web apps locally that I use for various purposes. In my case, this also includes some cool custom developed things.

I also use Zeroconf to easily discover all this foo around a network.

I run my critical mysql install by hand - it’s not constantly up. This is so, as somebody noticed (during Eben’s keynote at the MySQL Conference where he talked a lot about privacy) that one of the apps i run is entitled “tax”.

Since I’m somewhere other than at home, my mysql instance was stopped (much harder for people to grab the data out of it if the process isn’t running to begin with).

So yeah… good points - check what random people out on the network may have access to on your laptop - and know what you should not run as default (I’m careful there).

Nine dollars (US) of Water (how many hours would somebody on minimum wage have to work to buy this 1.5L of water?):

Apart from that, jetlagged - managed to find food, TV, internet. All good.

I’ll be putting photos up on my gallery (which is running a MySQL Cluster 5.1 backend - with disk data) over at:

http://saturn.flamingspork.com/gallery/v/conf/mysql2007/

Tomorrow morning (11.5hrs time actually) I’ll be on a plane to SFO (then down to Santa Clara) in preparation for the MySQL Conference.

So, if you’re in the area - give us a buzz. My aussie phone will work, as will traditional email.

Also on IRC… should be easy to find me (freenode).