Daniel's nonsense talk

Voor eenieder die het nog niet wist: Ik ga verhuizen naar Maarssen.

Ik ga verhuizen naar Maarssenbroek. Ik ga daar samenwonen met Marleen. Hierdoor kom ik op fietsafstand van m'n werk te wonen :)

Nu ben ik alles aan het inpakken (of weggooien). Best een werk nog.

Gister hebben we wat nieuwe meubels uitgezocht. Allemaal mooi teak, dus we krijgen zometeen een prachtige inrichting :)

We kunnen altijd nog hulp gebruiken! (hint)

Zo en nu weer snel verder met inpakken, etc..

Ik ga verhuizen op 13 Augustus.

Ons nieuwe adres nodig? Stuur een mailtje!

I wrote about my MySQL wishlist on November 14th 2007 and now it's time for an update. I will copy-paste the old entry. The original text will be in italics.

1. Per user and/or per database quota
Would very useful in setups for shared hosting. This would also prevent one database from bringing down the whole server. Separate tablespaces on different mountpoint can ease the pain, but I consider that a nasty hack.
No update. Still problematic

2. External authentication
I've seen numerous scripts which fetch the authentication info from ldap, a file, another database or some other authentication store. This should be integrated into mysql. The mysql grant tables should be pluggable so it is possible to write a custom authentication plugin. We already have plugable engines and function (UDF) so this shouldn't be that hard is it?
No update. Still problematic

3. Database locator
So you've got hundreds of servers.... and a multitude of databases. How to connect to the right server to reach the database you needed? Something like oracle TNS would be helpful here. What about implementing TNS for MySQL or just using DNS? How do you solve this?
No update. Still problematic

4. Saving extra metadata about the database.
A common way to store stuff like customerid, data classification, service classification (development, production, etc) would be helpful. Many people are already storing this info but there is no way MySQL Administrator, phpMyAdmin or other tools can use it.
No update. Still problematic

5. better protection against run-away queries
I would like to set max_query_time to 2 minutes.... but how?
No update. Still problematic. There is a safe-updates (a.k.a. i-am-a-dummy) option, but this doesn't fix it.

6. restore manager
So you've created a backup using mysqldump for all databases and you've got your binlogs....it would be great if there was a tool which would filter one table or one database from your backup and replay the binlogs for that database. Somewhat like xfsrestore -i. I would call it the see-what-you've-got-and-pick-wha- you-like feature. Point in time recover is just too hard for many people starting with MySQL.
No update. Still problematic, especially with multiple types of backups (dump, hot, NDB)

7. SNMP for statistics
Monitoring and statistics for many kinds of software and devices are using SNMP, but not for MySQL. Many people are using the MySQL protocol to fetch performance counters from their databases for cacti statistics. For some setups this will require many firewall and access list updates/changes while SNMP is already active.

There is a software package which add this functionality to MySQL: mysql-snmp
MySQL Enterprise does some SNMP, but I don't know the exact details

8. SNMP for alerting
Alert reporting to IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView and such requires scripting. How nice would it be to just load a MIB and set the snmp manager address and community and see the alerts coming in

MySQL Enterprise does some SNMP, but I don't know the exact details

8. Auditing
For PCI, SOX404, HIPPA and other regulations auditing would be very helpfull. And ofcourse also for security forensics.
There are some scripts and third-party applications which do basic auditing, mostly to verify secure installation. And Worklog #3771, Worklog #1410 and Worklog #2878 could bring a long-term solution. There are guidelines for audit logging in applications available.

Please let me know if there are any solutions or work-arounds

Update 1: Yes, without maatkit this list would have been a bit longer :) it's also the default location to look for a work-around.

Earlier I reported about two crashes related to MySQL 5.0.22 on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

I think those bugs show a lack of testing on the side of Cannonical/Ubuntu. And for MySQL there is a quite good test suite available, so it's not rocketsience.

There are multiple reasons why you could use the MySQL Test Framework:
1. Test if bug you previously experienced exists in the version you are using or planning to use.
2. Test if configuration changes have a good or bad result on the stability of mysqld.
3. Test if important functions still return the correct results (especially importand for financial systems)

$ echo "SELECT @@version;" > version.test
$ cp version.test version.result
$ mysql < version.test >> version.result
$ mysqltest --result-file=version.result --test-file=version.test
ok
$ cat version.result
SELECT @@version;
@@version
5.0.81-1-log

There is a utility for MySQL Cluster called ndb_cpcd which is a test utility for development. It controls processes and listens on a TCP port. Is has some overlap with the MySQL Instance Manager. But there is very few documentation available about it and I wonder if anyone is actually using this. And the other test utility for NDB is ndb_test_platform. I could not find any documentation about it ndb_test_platform, so i guess I'm not supposed to use it?

1. Set this variable
thread_stack = 265K

2. Execute this query
mysql> SELECT 0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+
0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0
+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0;

3. And crash!
ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server during query

It should've trown an error like this:
ERROR 1436 (HY000): Thread stack overrun: 123072 bytes used of a 131072 byte stack, and 8192 bytes needed. Use 'mysqld -O thread_stack=#' to specify a bigger stack.

I found a new crasher in the MySQL 5.0 version which ships with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

> SELECT * FROM (SELECT mu.User FROM mysql.user mu UNION SELECT mu.user FROM mysql.user mu ORDER BY mu.user) a;
ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server during query

The bug report: LP392236

On MySQL 5.0.51 on Debian stable it returns this error (like it should):
ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column 'mu.user' in 'order clause'

The correct query should be like this (Using culumn a number):
> SELECT * FROM (SELECT mu.User FROM mysql.user mu UNION SELECT mu.user FROM mysql.user mu ORDER BY 1) a;

Today I woke up quite early to go to www.keltfest.nl .. but when I arrived at my car one window was broken and my radio was gone.

So I went to the police and called carglass to have my window replaced. They will replace my window between 5pm and 8pm... it's now 9.30am..so no keltfest today :(

Before	After

I got the Pioneer FH-P80BT radio in my Volkswagen, and here is a short review:

Bluetooth support
Works, but it needs an upgrade if you're using a Nokia phone with new (4.x) firmware. So I had to upgrade it before I could use my Nokia N73 with it. Pairing with my Linux based Nokia N810 still fails however.

It is possible to dial phone numbers with the remote. However it does not support DTMF, so for voicemail functions it is still needed to directly use my phone.

It didn't manage to fetch my phonebook from my phone. It does support receiving single entries via bluetooth.

USB & iPod Support
iPod support is fine. But iPod's are either bulky or limited to 32 gigabyte. I choose to by a USB harddisk because it's a lot cheaper.

I bought a 320GB WD passport.

To get it working with the pioneer a few tweaks were needed, and it still has some limitations
Radio
Works nice. It has support for RDS for traffic and news.

Conclusion
it's a nice device if you don't use a USB harddisk.

And a link to the product page: http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/products/25/121/61/FH-P80BT/index.html

I've created a very simple MySQL scanning module for the metasploit framework.

1. Download the mysql_version file and rename it to mysql_version.rb and put it in the framework-3.2/modules/auxiliary/scanner/mysql directory of your metasploit installation.
http://compukid.no-ip.org/dev/scripts/mysql_version

2. Use using msfcli
./msfcli auxiliary/scanner/mysql/mysql_version RHOSTS=192.168.0.1 E
[*] 192.168.0.1:3306, MySQL server version: 5.0.81-1-log (Protocol 10)

3. More options:
set THREADS to 10 and RHOSTS to 192.168.0.0/24 to scan a whole network.

I've created a very simple SSH scanning module for the metasploit framework.

1. Download the ssh_version file and rename it to ssh_version.rb and put it in the framework-3.2/modules/auxiliary/scanner/ssh directory of your metasploit installation.
http://compukid.no-ip.org/dev/scripts/ssh_version

2. Use using msfcli
./msfcli auxiliary/scanner/ssh/ssh_version RHOSTS=192.168.0.1 E
[*] 192.168.0.1:22, SSH server version: SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5+b1

3. More options:
set THREADS to 10 and RHOSTS to 192.168.0.0/24 to scan a whole network.

As I was browsing to Microsoft's SQLServer website to download a product to experiment with SQL injection, the website prompted me to download Microsoft Silverlight. So I clicked the button and it said that I had to go to Novell to download a silverlight implementation for my computer. (Nicely done Microsoft!)

I didn't install the Moonlight implementation from the website, but I used apt-get to install the Ubuntu Moonlight packages. The I visited the website again... and it didn't work :( The Ubuntu packages only implement Silverlight 1.0 and not the required Silverlight 2.0. So I went to the Mono Moonlight page again and installed the firefox extension (moonlight 2 preview). Then a firefox restart.... and *kaboom* *crash*... firefox was starting and then immediately it crashed. Running firefox from a terminal windows showed it was crashing on some moonlight libraries. Purging the moonlight packages from Ubuntu fixed the problem. Besides the CPU-usage the page now loads fine.

GNOME 2.22 is released :)

And also in dutch: Gnome 2.22 Aankondiging

Tor is giving away free fantasy and SF ebooks.

The books are available in three file formats. You'll need a N810, Amazon Kindle or some other ebook reading device to be able to read in wherever you want.

I have some 'normal' books which I want to read first. I just bought "The book of lost things" by John Connolly. And I'm now reading Egil's Saga. So enough reading fun for the next few months :)

Ebooks are nice. I can carry around a couple of them on my Nokia without needing extra space. But ebooks can't easily be signed, the don't have the book smell. Lending them to someone else is not trivial. So don't start burning your old books.

Save a tree, read an ebook :)

Yesterday I passed the CMCDEV exam.

I only used the study guide (previous entry) and the official manual to prepare for the exam.

The study guide is a good preparation for the exam.(Thanks to Roland Bouman and all other people involved with the book. The only minor issue with the book is that it didn't feel finished. Images which should've been printed in high quality and some phrases about a CD which is absent (All listed/fixed in the errata)

I filed a few bug reports while studying. (patched included :) )

So now let's wait for MySQL 5.1 to become GA.

I was reading Dan William's blog about the wonderful new features of our beloved NetworkManager.

I wanted to leave a comment about the multiple selected radiobuttons which seemed a bit odd. I want one connection and only one, why are there so many radiobuttons? Why not checkmarks if there are multiple options?

Gnome blogs
...do not allow me to login using livejournal's OpenID service.
...is complaining about my AIM OpenID not being bound to a known login. (LJ does allow users w/o account to leave comments based on OpenID auth only)
...says "Sorry, that email address is not allowed!" when I try to signup for a account.
...does have a link to Dan's previous post, but the previous post doesn't have a link to the current one.
...does not allow me to reply to Dan's post

Gnome-power-manager was report a remaining battery time which was much lower than my expectation, so I put it to the test. I configured gnome-power-manager to do absolutely nothing when the power is critically low and I pulled the plug...so after some time gnome-power-manager started complaining. A few minutes later the laptop started beeping.... and then it stopped.

I plugged the adapter back in and booted the system. I tried to login using gdm...but my screen stayed black. I switched to tty1 to have a look at my .xsession-errors file. It contained no obvious errors. The next step was a failsave terminal login and then starting all the components by hand. Metacity started just fine. Nautilus crashed almost instantaneous, so I started gdb which showed a crash on gtk icon loading. It turned out that the unclear shutdown caused corruption in the gtk icon cashes. I updated the caches and I was back in business.

Vandaag ben ik weer naar de Gothic & Fantasy beurs in Rijswijk geweest. Ik was vroeg gegaan met hoop op een parkeerplaats en een korte rij bij de ingang...Parkeerplek was even zoeken. De rij was lang, maar ging behoorlijk rap.

Ik was zoals wel vaker het geval is in m'n eentje naar de beurs gegaan. Dit beviel best goed. Veel bekenden gezien en gesproken.

Ik heb Rapalje 2x zien spelen. Bij het eerste optreden heb ik het goed naar m'n zin gehad met mensen die ik vantevoren nog niet kende. Het tweede optreden was wat meer een zooitje (bandleden die kwijt waren enzo) maar was evengoed leuk. En de sexy danseres was niet verkeerd, maar het voegde ook niet echt iets toe.

En ik heb ook nog de beurs afgelopen met iemand die ik een paar jaar niet gezien had. Wonderbaarlijk om te zien hoe weinig iemand kan veranderen in zoveel jaar. En dan kom je er natuurlijk achter dat je op dezelfde festivals geweest bent...en elkaar niet bent tegengekomen. Erg leuk om oude vriendschappen weer te zien herleven, dat doet me goed :) Ook al afgesproken om naar Arrow Classic Rock te gaan voor KISS :)

De Mead voorraad is ook weer op nivo... de flessen die er al stonden hebben 3 nieuwe vriendjes gekregen :) (jong, oud, dansk mjød) En ik heb weer een nieuwe buckle (soort van riemgesp).

Oftewel het festival seizoen is weer begonnen :)

Today I received the "MySQL 5.1 Cluster Certification Study Guide".

I will compare this book to the "MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide" from MySQL Press. This is the book I used to study for the MCDEV (Certified Developer) and MCDBA (Certified DBA) exams.

The MySQL study guide was published by MySQL Press which is a cooperation with a n old-school publisher.

The MySQL cluster study guide  is published by Lulu.com which is an online on-demand publisher.

Lulu.com Cons:
1. The print quality is worse.
2. The paper is less white.
3. The layout is more compact. The margins are really small.

Lulu.com Pros:
1. On-demand print. This will make updated versions possible.
2. The book is smaller (small margins) and is very easy to carry with you (handy if your studying in the train to work and such)
3. Lulu.com webchat rocks. There were some troubles with ordering. My paypal account had to be verified, which can't be done directly; So after I ordered I decided that I wanted to use my creditcard for this order. The lulu.com website didn't have a "switch payment method for already ordered products"-option nor did it have a "cancel this order, so I can resubmit"-option. The webchat support option worked great, the order was quickly resubmitted :)
4. The price is good. This together with the dollar to euro rate makes it really cheap.

The contents of the book look like really good study material. It will even be good reference material for people who are already using  MySQL Cluster.

You can order the book on lulu.com: http://www.lulu.com/content/1297960
And here you can order the prerequisite: http://mysql.com/certification/studyguides/

This is a quick follow-up to Jono Bacon's review of the Black Crusade

Last friday I went to the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam for the Black Crusade together with some friends. I read Jono's review a few days back so I already knew what to expect.

• Shadows Fall. The singer was struggling throughout the the concert and he was apologizing for not being able to sing as well as normally. But the other option was canceling the show, and that wasn't an option for him.
• Arch Enemy. A very good show
• Dragonforce. As gay as ever. I saw them a few times before and they almost didn't change. They seemed a bit bored at times. But nevertheless a good performance.
• Trivium. They played well.
  
• Machine Head. Still going strong! It seemed they were genuinely enjoying the show. They were completely at ease on the stage, almost as if it was there second living room.

So if you happen to live in a country in which the black crusade still has to come, go and see it!

In the last year some major dutch companies were involved in takeover from abroad. To name a few of them: ABN Amro bank, Grolsch and Stork.

Some companies in the Netherlands are very much influenced by the UK and US. A lot of companies with offices in the Netherlands are not really dutch anyways. The photo on the right even shows that the doesn't even know that the dutch flag is red-white-blue and NOT blue-white-red reed elsevier. I made this picture on the way to the office.

There are many pro's/con's about why this is good/bad so I won't repeat them here.