Fixing low durability GTID replica with Voodoo

At my FOSDEM talk earlier this year, I gave a trick for fixing a crashed GTID replica.  I never blogged about this, so now is a good time.  What is pushing me to write on this today is my talk at MinervaDB Athena 2020 this Friday.  At this conference, I will present more details about MySQL replication crash safety.  So you know what to do if you want to learn more about this subject.  Let's now talk about voodoo.

An Unprivileged User can crash your MySQL Server

Yes, your read the title correctly: an unprivileged user can crash your MySQL Server.  This applies for the default configuration of MySQL 8.0.21 (and it is probably the case for all MySQL 8 GA versions).  Depending on your configuration, it might also be the case for MySQL 5.7.  This needs malicious intent and a lot of determination, so no need to panic as this will not happen by accident.  I am not sharing the exploit in this post (I might do it later), but I am telling you how to avoid the problem.

Update on Planet for the MySQL Community (June 7, 2020)

Three weeks ago, I released the Pluto Beta of Planet for the MySQL Community.  Since then, a few things changed and I think it is worth doing an update to the Ecosystem.  The change I am the most happy about is that Ivan Groenewold started helping with the project (you can find him in the people of the oursqlcommunity.org GitHub organization).  So Planet for the MySQL Community is not a one-man initiative anymore, and it is growing into being closer to a true community project (we could still use more help, feel free to contact me if you want to join the team, some sysadmin skills required).

Planet [for the] MySQL Community: Pluto Beta

As indicated in a previous post, I am working on Planet [for the] MySQL Community for which I did a RFC on the Requirements.  I am happy to announce the beta release of Planet [for the] MySQL Community using the Planet Pluto Free Feed Reader and (Static) Website Generator.  If you are in a hurry, you can check it out at https://planet-beta-pluto.oursqlcommunity.org/.  This post describes how I got there, how it was built, how it works and a little more.

Planet MySQL Community: Requirements RFC

As indicated in a previous post, I am working on a Planet MySQL Community (this name is not final, see below).  In this post, I want to present what I think the requirements should be for this new aggregator.  This is a Request for Comment (RFC): I do not claim completeness nor perfection, this might (will) evolve, and your remarks are welcome.  A tl&dr is available in the Summary of Requirements below.

Planning for the AFTER Planet MySQL (bis)

Oups, my previous post had a forbidden word and did not show-up on Planet MySQL, so retry...

As written in a previous post, the state of Planet MySQL is unhealthy !  I am still aggregated there for now as, before leaving what was the best news-feed for the MySQL Community, we need a replacement.  This post aims at starting a discussion on this replacement.

Planning for the AFTER Planet MySQL

As written in my previous post, the state of Planet MySQL is unhealthy !  I am still aggregated there for now as, before leaving what was the best news-feed for the MySQL Community, we need a replacement.  This post aims at starting a discussion on this replacement.

State of Planet MySQL: unhealthy !

Also, the state of bugs.mysql.com: unhealthy (last paragraph below, but this would be too long a title).

I have been complaining for some time about Planet MySQL filtering content that I think it should not.  Shlomi made a courageous decision on this and explained it in his recent post (Pulling his blog out of Planet MySQL aggregator, over community concerns).  I am thinking of doing the same.  What are your thoughts on this ?  Please share them in the comments below (or on Shlomi's blog).

JFG MySQL Advice during COVID-19

Update 2020-05-05: I stopped providing consulting hours.  They were not very popular, but it was worth trying.

We are all impacted by COVID-19.  On my side, this virus disrupted my travel, professional and personal plans for the upcoming months.  To overcome these disruptions, and following the idea of someone on MySQL Community Slack, I am experimenting with giving MySQL advice on a 30-minute basis.  You can book a slot using this link:

• https://jfg-mysql.blogspot.com/p/jfg-mysql-advice-during-covid-19.html

While booking, you will be asked to describe what you want to discuss.  I will confirm the meeting by mail if it is a subject I can help you with.  The discussion can be on Skype, Google Hangout, or your favorite video conferencing system (while booking, you will be asked for it).

This is an experiment !  I opened consulting hours between March 31st and April 11th.  If this goes well, I will add more; if it does not go well, I will cancel everything.  Also, I will do my best to answer your questions and help you with your MySQL challenges, but I cannot replace a full-time DBA on your team.  Also, I will not be able to get a complete picture of your situation in such a short time, so you will have to be smart in deciding if you want to follow my advice or not.

Good luck to you all and courage during these strange times !

A Legacy Behavior of MySQL Corrupting Restored Backups (replicate-same-server-id = OFF)

In my previous post (Puzzled by MySQL Replication), I describe a weird, but completely documented, behavior of replication that had me scratching my head for hours because it was causing data corruption.  I did not give too many details then as I also wanted allowing you to scratch your head if you wished.  In this post, I describe this behavior in more details.

Puzzled by MySQL Replication (War Story)

Recently, I was puzzled by MySQL replication !  Some weird, but completely documented, behavior of replication had me scratching my head for hours.  I am sharing this war story so you can avoid losing time like me (and also maybe avoid corrupting your data when restoring a backup).  The exact justification will come in a follow-up post, so you can also scratch your head trying to understand what I faced.  So let's dive-in.