Quite some time ago, I published scripts to implement password policies for MySQL, and promised to show how to expose violations of that policy via MySQL Enterprise Monitor (MEM).  That stalled somewhat with other objectives, but I want to revisit it now that MEM 3.0 is GA.  If you haven’t tried MEM 3.0 yet, consider doing so – it’s quick and easy to set up.

Many people don’t realize that MEM can be extended to monitor things beyond MySQL Server health, including visibility into application state as observed from the database.  In part of the hands-on-lab I recently led at MySQL Connect, we …

To only slightly misquote one of the greatest movies of all times:

You keep using that option.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

Perhaps like many users, I had certain assumptions about what max_connect_errors really does – but in looking closely as part of investigating the new PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.HOST_CACHE table in MySQL 5.6, I learned that some very fundamental elements had escaped my notice.  I’m writing this blog post to help others who hold similar misconceptions of what this option does.

Many, if not most, MySQL DBAs are familiar with “host blocked” errors:

C:\mysql-5.5.27-winx64>bin\mysql -utest_mce -P3307 -h192.168.2.8
ERROR 1129 (HY000): Host …

MySQL Server has an aborted_connect status counter which will show you the number of failed attempts to establish a new connection.  The manual describes potential causes as follows:

• A client does not have privileges to connect to a database.
• A client uses an incorrect password.
• A connection packet does not contain the right information.
• It takes more than connect_timeout seconds to get a connect packet. See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”.

It goes on to make the following statement:

If …

Many MySQL users are familiar with using slow query logs and tools such as mysqldumpslow to identify poor-performing SQL commands, and MySQL 5.6 introduces new powerful tools in PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA.  Both allow you to identify the date/time and the user account from which the command was issued, which is helpful – but if you’re using MySQL Enterprise Monitor (MEM), you can immediately identify the actual line of code responsible for the SQL command in question.  This happens to be one of my favorite and powerful features of MEM, but it’s frequently overlooked by new and experienced MEM users alike, so I’m writing the post to highlight it.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor, of course, is a commercial product that’s part of the MySQL Enterprise subscription.  But it’s freely-available under 30-day trial terms for evaluation from Oracle Software Delivery Cloud – if …

If you are a MySQL support customer, the recent release of My Oracle Support (MOS) 6.5 has some features which may interest you (if you’re not a customer, this post likely won’t interest you). MOS 6.5 was introduced on 06 April, and with it came the ability to opt in to receive service request (SR) update details via email. This was a feature some MySQL Support customers missed after the migration to MOS. Thanks to feedback from MySQL Support customers and others with similar needs, this feature has now been implemented. Because email is an inherently insecure delivery mechanism, not all customers will wan this, and the feature requires customers to explicitly opt in before SR update content is sent via email.  Coupled with the MOS Mobile interface, Support customers have a number of flexible ways to access and manage SRs.

The second major enhancement is the ability to …

MySQL Enterprise 5.5 (trial version available here) includes MySQL PAM authentication plugin. In this post I will show how to configure it with the OpenLDAP and Active Directory.

MySQL PAM authentication uses Linux pam_ldap library to send the calls. To configure MySQL LDAP authentication we will need to configure pam_ldap on linux.

OpenLDAP Linux configuration

• Make sure that libpam-ldap/openldap is installed. If not, on RedHat/CentOS use commands:

# yum install openldap openldap-clients

• Configure /etc/ldap.conf. Sample configuration:

debug 10 # set debug level only during the initial configuration
base dc=corp,dc=company_name,dc=com
binddn cn=service_account,OU=Service Accounts,OU=US Security,DC=corp,DC=company_name,DC=com
bindpw <password>
timelimit 120 …

Benjamin Wood talks at the Dallas MySQL Tech tour on the history of MySQL

The first MySQL Tech Tour in Dallas is over. A capacity crowd filled the room. Only a few had never had ‘hands on’ with the MySQL database and very few were comfortable source code readers. The majority came to hear about embedding MySQL, how to tun systems for better performance, and some new features in the product.

Benjamin Wood started with a presentation on the history of MySQL and the changes in the product over the last few releases. Craig Sylvester showed how to use embedded MySQL. Then Benjamin capped off the event with a presentation on database monitoring and performance tuning. The event did go slightly over scheduled time due to an extended question and answer period following the presentations.

Thanks to all who attended.

…

Last time, I installed the MySQL Enterprise Monitor and the Monitor Agent on an Ubuntu system. I was able to get both parts to talk to each other and get the graphs to display.

Two system being monitored with MySQL Enterprise Monitor

I installed the Agent on a Mac and had it displaying data in literally less time than it took to type this sentence.

I could information on both systems or dig down into each server. The dashboard has red, yellow, or green icons on various status items.

What — two alerts on my Ubuntu box?  I clicked on the link and found I had CPU Usage Excessive and CPU I/O Usage Excessive during a time I was bulk loading data.  I was able to mark those off the ‘to be worried about’ list.  There are other …

MySQL Enterprise Monitor or MEM is a tool to watch over one instance to a farm of MySQL servers, to warn you of problems, and can advise you on fixing problems.

The is the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Dashboard

But what does it take it get it running? How much can it show me about my server?

Start by downloading MEM from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (And it is still free for a 30 day trial). In addition to the monitor, make sure you download the monitor agent. For my 32-bit Ubuntu test box, there were named mysqlmonitor-2.3.7.2104-linux-x86-installer.bin and mysqlmonitoragent-2.3.7.2104-linux-x86-installer.bin.

Executing …

MySQL Enterprise Backup (MEB) provides an easy way to perform incremental backups. You do have to know the log sequence number or LSN1 of the previous backup. And you can find the LSN in the meta/backup_variables.txt file from the previous backup.

MEB saves all the changes from the specified previous backup, see the mysqlbackup: INFO: Backup contains changes from lsn 14652513 to lsn 14659161 line from the following:


$ ./mysqlbackup --incremental -u root -p --incremental-backup-dir=/home/dstokes/foo2 --with-timestamp --start-lsn=14652512 backup

MySQL Enterprise Backup version 3.6.0 [2011/07/01]
Copyright (c) 2003, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

INFO: Starting with following command line ...
./mysqlbackup --incremental -u root -p
--incremental-backup-dir=/home/dstokes/foo2 …