April, 12, 2005 archives

the best part of matthew thomas’s review of usability problems with ubuntu is the punchline.

i’ve been dealing with a mysql bug on irix and mac os x that turned up in our test suite once i fixed the kill test to actually do the test properly. after much digging in code and staring at debug traces, i noticed on irix that in the thread that is being killed, it was stuck in a blocking read that the calling code believed would be non-blocking.

by changing our setting of the non-blocking mode to use both O_NDELAY and O_NONBLOCK instead of just O_NONBLOCK, i was able to get the code to work. but i’m not sure why it is necessary.

on the bright side, this may also fix this bug about wait_timeout not working on mac os x.

mike hillyer posted the sessions he plans to attend at the mysql users conference, and that seems like a good idea to me. so here’s mine (excluding the keynotes), with almost no overlap with mike’s list:

• tuesday
  • (10:30) guru best practicies: c and server coding or livejournal’s backend: a history of scaling: i always enjoy hearing about the crazy stuff they do at livejournal, but i’m also curious to hear what turns up at the guru session with brian and monty.
  • (11:20) managing lamp stacks with open source tools: nagios, mrtg, etc.: these are tools i should know more about.
  • (13:30) utilizing the mysql spatial extension to create an interactive atlas of the island of ireland: gis is nifty stuff, and it will be nice to hear how someone is using our support for it.
  • (14:20) panel discussion: scaling and high availability challenges: should be an interesting discussion.
  • (16:00) looking for tickets to see your favorite sports team, musical artist or museum exhibit? find them at ticketmaster powered by mysql! or query optimization for subqueries and joins: i’m curious to hear about what ticketmaster has done, but also should know more about how query optimization works for subqueries and joins. i’m torn.
  • (16:50) mysql cluster features and roadmap: my knowledge of mysql cluster is spotty, so this could help fill in the blank spaces.
• wednesday:
  • (10:30) enterprise mysql: views in mysql 5.0: another thing i should know more about. it cracks me up that “enterprise” found its way into the title of this talk.
  • (11:20) building and optimizing data warehouse “star schemas” with mysql: another topic that just strikes me as interesting.
  • (13:30) tour of the mysql source code: i suspect i’ve already had to pick up quite a bit of what brian and monty will be talking about, but it is always good to hear it again.
  • (14:20) panel discussion: challenges in the enterprise: this is really an ‘or’ entry, in case i decide to skip out on the second half of the code tour.
  • (16:00) new innodb features: something i should know about.
  • (16:50) ways for using and extending fulltext: fulltext is an underappreciated mysql feature with too many rough edges. i’m curious to hear what joe stump has done with it.
• thursday:
  • (10:30) embedded mysql: my talk. that reminds me, i should really prepare for it.
  • (11:20) overview of the mysql 5.0 query optimizer: more stuff i should know more about.
  • (13:30) guru best practices: php: i’m one of the gurus, so i have to be there. before i remembered this, i had wikimedia, mysql, and free software or writing storage engines for mysql in my list.
  • (14:20) real world web scalability: i get to watch ask show off.

of course, i’ll probably only end up attending about half of these. best laid plans, and all that.

marketing mailing lists are curious things. i ended up with four tickets for television preview on april 17 in pasadena. it’s my chance to go screw up someone’s hard work during pilot season, i guess.