It was nice for a while, it was easy to manage and easy to monitor, but it doesn’t take a college drop out to understand that this configuration creates a single point of failure for a handful of applications.

Simple solution? Build a minimal MySQL cluster across two machines.

Even more simple? Build a minimal MySQL cluster in two virtual machines and place them on two different physical servers.

Now, I know what you may be saying, “But Mike, I’m not a dba! I’m not awesome with sql, MySQL, or Unix! Can I do this?”

To be perfectly honest, yes. It really isn’t all that hard and I will try my best to explain it simply, yet effectively.

The first step is to build a pair of servers you can use. I would suggest CentOS, and I can even help you out!

Check out my post on how to build a small CentOS installation.

When you have two servers, you may now start to look at the four components of a MySQL cluster:

1. Server
2. Cluster Managemen
3. Cluster Storage Engine
4. Proxy/Load Balancer

The first three parts are included in the MySQL Cluster package.

For this installation, we are going to use the ‘Linux (non RPM packages)’ download for the sake of simplicity. This should be fine for testing, or an an x86 machine. Ideally, you’d be using a 64bit machine for production, in which case you’d either use distro specific packages or compile from source.

From here on in: Every step described should be done on both servers unless specified otherwise.

Download the MySQL cluster package to a directory on your server.

Create the mysql group and user

# groupadd mysql

# useradd -g mysql mysql

Unpack it to /usr/local/

# tar -C /usr/local/ -xzf  ./mysql-cluster-gpl-6.3.17-linux-i686-glibc23.tar.gz

Link your installation to /usr/local/mysql

# ln -s /usr/local/mysql-cluster-gpl-6.3.17-linux-i686-glibc23 /usr/local/mysql

Create system databases

# cd /usr/local/mysql

# ./scripts/mysql_install_db –user=mysql

Set directory permissions

# cd /usr/local/mysql

# chown -R root .

# chown -R mysql ./data

# chgrp mysql .

Install sysconfig rc script

# cp support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysqld

# chmod +x /etc/init.d/mysqld

# chkconfig –add mysqld

That is enough for today, you basically have a working MySQL server at this point. Next we will create the configuration files and start up the NDB storage engine and cluster mangement nodes.

…to be continued!

For those of you who don’t know, RHEL is one of two major players in the enterprise linux market ( the other being novell’s SUSE Linux ). It has been around forever and is always great to have knowledge on… It also costs a metric shitload. CentOS solved our problem! They took RHEL and build their own identical linux distro for free, which is legit due to RHELs open source licensing

This article is not overly in depth, but is enough to get an install off the ground with a small CPU and disk footprint. Anyway, let’s get to it.

First, perform an almost default install. The only section you need to modify is the software installation.

To install only the bare essentials, uncheck any and all software to be installed. This involves unchecking the Gnome desktop option, then choosing to customize software install, and unchecking every option under each software group.

RHEL/CentOS will then override your no-install option with only the bare essentials required to have a working system.

When your install is complete, you can get a list of all running services by issuing:

# chkconfig –list|grep \:on

I then disable a pile of services with the following script/command.

Many of these will fail as if you do a minimal software installation, many of these packages won’t exist. If you do a default install, all of these will exist.

# for service in acpid apmd auditd atd autofs bluetooth cpuspeed cups firstboot hidd gpm ip6tables iptables isdn kudzu mcstrans mdmonitor messagebus netfs nfslock pcscd portmap restorecond rpcgssd rpcidmapd sendmail smartd yum-updatesd; do \

chkconfig $service off; \

service $service stop; \

done

Add RPMforge to open up a pile more software options

# wget http://packages.sw.be/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
# rpm -Uvh rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Remove unused/unwanted packages

# yum -y remove selinux*

Install any updates.

# yum update

Please note that this is a document in progress, but currently it gives you a stable, incredibly well known/supported, and flexible linux installation. ( and free if you use CentOS )

With the steps above, your installation size should be just under 550MB while including YUM for easy installation of the myriad of software out there for RHEL/CentOS.

Enjoy.

http://www.centos.org/

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/

The voice of this girl… and the power coming from the band… were just incredible and worked perfectly together.

I could gush on about this performance and the album behind it, but really, the best thing for me to do is share. This is her video for Chasing Pavements. The album is 19, I suggest checking it out.

Just recently, however, I installed openSUSE 10.3 x86_64 on my desktop, and was pleased to see that Compiz Fusion (the new name for the result of merging of Beryl into Compiz) is now a 1-click installation. All I can say this far, is that it’s the simplest composite desktop installation I’ve ever done and it’s completely fantastic.

Anyone who has seen the desktop is blown away by how spectacular it looks while still being completely usable. The plug in choices are vast, I’ll just post a few screen shots to show you what you may, or may not, be missing.

One of the many ways you can do application switching.

Desktop on a cube.

Moving a wobbly window between the 4 desktops

Did I mention it’s free?

For anybody who hasn’t heard of the films, they are made to show the other side of the file sharing movement. To battle the stance of big business and government. I highly recommend the first one, and considering all that has been going on, I’m thinking the second one might be just as good if not better.

Part I

Part II

AT&T owns and maintains a vast chunk of the ip backbone in the United States. What this means, is that whether or not you subscribe to their internet service, your traffic will end up passing through their network in some way shape or form, and probably more often than you’d think.

Recently, AT&T has announced that it will start a project to distinguish pirated from legit content in an effort to rid their vast network of unlawful content.

Clearly this is an attempt to appease lobbying groups and copyright owners, which at first glance, seems almost rational. Copyright is a big issue in the United States as demonstrated by lawsuits and advertisements, etc. However, it starts to get fuzzy when you think deeper into the situation.

AT&T also maintains wired and wireless telephone networks. Certainly these networks may transport or house unlawful information in various ways, but they do not spend money and time trying to crack down on whatever various offenses are played out over those networks. It makes sense, as a telecommunications provider they can’t be held liable for assuring that all use of their networks is lawful and moral. Certainly there exists a process for investigating, charging, and punishing criminal activity. So why is it up to a telecom to get into the business of enforcing copyright law?

The worst part, as far as I can see it, is that the sifting of all that traffic, and having the computing power to somehow pass judgment on packets are legal and what are not, is going to require a lot of man power, and a lot of computer power. That translates to $$ being spent on the project, and you can be pretty sure that they’re not doing it just for the moral principle, big telecoms don’t spend money unless they are forced to, or if it’s likely to provide a return on their investment. Neither looks great for the average consumer.

To be fair, I actually lied, that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that the money and time spent is going to protect the profits of industries that pay actors in the tens of millions for a 90 minute movies that really aren’t that great. I have never heard so much whining about money from someone so well off since Lars Ulrich and Metallica started their battle against Napster.

No wait, I thought of something even worse. Many school shooting plots are advertised on the internet before they are perpetrated. If you’re going to police your traffic, why not build systems to flag traffic of this nature. Or child pornography, or anything more serious that copyright infringement.

Money Talks

This has become the portal page of IamRoot.