There were free copies of the Linux Journal handed out to attendees outside in the hallways here at CommunityOne and I noticed that they just published this year's Readers' Choice Awards - MySQL was voted as the favourite database by 62.7% of their readers!

MySQL is not only the world's most popular open-source database, it's your favorite as well. Although PostreSGL,
SQLite, Firebird and others registered votes, the competition was not fierce. It doesn't hurt that MySQL runs on more than
20 different platforms.

Thanks a lot to the readers of LinuxJournal, we really appreciate the support!

Just two weeks after having returned from the MySQL Conference, I just arrived safely in San Francisco again. This time to attend the CommunityOne on Monday and the JavaOne conference from Tuesday till Friday, which should keep me occupied for the rest of the week. I look forward to meeting my fellow MySQL team members (Colin, Giuseppe and Jay will be here, too), as well as many new colleagues from Sun! Shoot me an email, if you would like to meet.

This article describes how to install the Drupal 6.2 CMS on MySQL 6.0, using the Falcon Storage Engine. The operating system is a default Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" (x86) installation.

I will make a few assumptions here, in order to keep the instructions simple: a fresh OS install, no other MySQL databases or web services are running or have already been installed. Both MySQL and the web server are installed on the same host. You should be able to become root to install packages and to have access to the local file system and the system configuration.

This article will explain how to install and configure Apache/PHP, MySQL 6.0 and …

JFYI, I now placed a PDF of my MySQL Conference talk slides about "Performing MySQL backups using Linux LVM Snapshots" on my MySQL talks page. Enjoy!

While reading Colin's post about LugRadio Live, I stumbled over the Zumastor Linux Storage Project. Going through the project home page and their HOWTO got me curious - could this eventually become an alternative to using DRBD (for replicating data) and LVM snapshots (for performing backups)?

Zumastor is Free software that adds enterprise storage features (primarily improved snapshots and remote replication) to Linux.

Snapshots

LVM already lets administrators create snapshots, but its design has the surprising property that every block you change on the original volume consumes one block for each snapshot. The resulting speed and space penalty …

I am happy to announce the release of mylvmbackup version 0.8. mylvmbackup is a tool for quickly creating backups of a MySQL server's data files. To perform a backup, mylvmbackup obtains a read lock on all tables and flushes all server caches to disk, makes an LVM snapshot of the volume containing the MySQL data directory, and unlocks the tables again. The snapshot process takes only a small amount of time. When it is done, the server can continue normal operations, while the actual file backup proceeds.

Below is the list of changes since version 0.6. You may wonder what happened to version 0.7 - it had a rather short life cycle as I was informed about a bug that I fixed quickly before I made a wider release announcement of 0.7.

• Fixed a bug in the InnoDB recovery function: the second mysqld process …

I recently was interviewed by Packt Publishing for their Impackt '08 web pages:

Ever since the formal adoption of the term in 1998, Open Source has experienced growth and adoption rates that defy pressures and suggestions that it’s a viable option for enthusiasts and geeks only. Governments, corporations as well as small businesses have begun to choose Open Source over proprietary software. However, with the global economy facing an uncertain future, how will open source be impacted? Can it continue to grow despite this?

With these questions in mind and more, Packt approached some people at the heart of this movement to understand their take on the future of open source.

The …

A bit late in the game, but maybe somebody would be interested in working on this proposed project of mine:

PlanetMySQL currently is merely an aggregator of submitted RSS feeds, with some functionality for filtering content to keep the discussion on topic. Due to its high volume of posts, many gems get "lost in the noise" and are hard to retrieve.

We'd like to expand the functionality of PlanetMySQL significantly to provide more possibilities for community participation and interaction. For this project, we are looking for a talented PHP hacker to set up a site that provides the current functionality and more:

• Voting on articles/blog postings: it must be possible for logged in users to cast a vote on articles, similar to the …

A gentle reminder: next week, there will be two more stops of the MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour:

• Monday, April 7th, 19:00: Hamburg, Germany. We will meet in the meeting rooms of the local Sun Microsystems offices ( Nagelsweg 55, 22097 Hamburg). There will be two technical sessions: Giuseppe will talk about the MySQL Sandbox, Kay Koll will give a presentation about how to combine MySQL with OpenOffice.org. He will also describe the new report generator and give an overview over the future of OpenOffice. You can register for this event via meetup.com or …

As Kaj already pointed out, the Sun/MySQL Meetup Mashup Tour will also make a stop in Munich, Germany this Friday. I will be there as well, we will meet at 14:00 at the Hilton Munich Park Hotel. Kaj and some other Sun people will join us a bit later. If you are in the area, make sure to stop by!

By the way, the Meetup Mashup Tour will make at least one more stop in Germany - I am organizing an event in Hamburg, Germany which will take place on Monday, April 7th (19:00). This was initially planned as another regular MySQL Meetup, but I offered to expand the scope a bit. We will now meet at the Sun offices, Sun will sponsor some food and drinks! In addition to …