Lenz Grimmer's blog

Since the beginning of this year, I'm a happy Lenovo ThinkPad T440 user. All components are supported on Linux (currently running Ubuntu 14.04 on it) — everything Just Worked "out of the box" after the installation. This has been my experience with all previous ThinkPad models so far (I also owned a T42, T60 and T420 before).

The laptop came with Windows 8 pre-installed, which I found very confusing to use (I haven't had actively worked with Windows for quite some time). But since I replaced the built-in hard disk drive with an SSD anyway (a 500GB Samsung EVO 840), that problem was solved quite quickly. Installing Linux via an USB stick was a simple affair, it most cases you can simply download and dd the ISO image on the USB stick and select it as the boot device on the next reboot by pressing F12 at the right moment.

However, not having Windows installed on another partition and not owning an external CD-ROM/DVD-drive, I now faced one problem: how to update the BIOS? Lenovo only provides a Windows-based tool and an ISO image that contains the BIOS update utility and the new firmware. However, this ISO-Image does not boot from an USB stick directly, so the dd method does not work.

Fortunately, like many times before, the ThinkWiki came to the rescue — their page about BIOS update without optical disk gave me the right clues. I downloaded the ISO image containing the BIOS update from the Lenovo Support web site and plugged in an empty USB stick, which appeared as /dev/sdc in the device list (the T440 has a built-in 16GB SSD on /dev/sdb.

The ISO image actually contains a (bootable) hard disk image, which can be dumped on an USB stick directly. To extract the image, I used geteltorito from the genisoimagepackage:

$ geteltorito -o bios.img gjuj13us.iso
Booting catalog starts at sector: 20 
Manufacturer of CD: NERO BURNING ROM VER 12
Image architecture: x86
Boot media type is: harddisk
El Torito image starts at sector 27 and has 32768 sector(s) of 512 Bytes

Image has been written to file "bios.img".
$ sudo dd if=bios.img of=/dev/sdc
32768+0 records in
32768+0 records out
16777216 bytes (17 MB) copied, 0,641393 s, 26,2 MB/s

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 16.0 GB, 16013942784 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15272 cylinders, total 31277232 sectors
Units = sectors of 1  512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1             32       32767       16368    1  FAT12

There's my bootable USB stick. Rebooting the laptop and choosing the USB stick from the boot menu (F12) properly booted into the BIOS update utility and allowed me to update the BIOS to the latest version. No Windows required!

The German Unix User Group (GUUG) will hold their annual conference "Frühjahrsfachgespräch" on September 23-26 this year (I know, not really "Frühjahr" anymore, but this is how it is).

The Call for Presentations is still open until May 31st. Talks can be proposed in German and English, and there are slots for longer tutorials as well.

The range of possible topics is broad, so if you think you have anything interesting to share with a very passionate and technical audience of sysadmins and developers, here are some suggestions:

• Operating Systems/Applications: architectures, privilege concepts, new developments, administration, mobile systems
• Relevant new OS Kernel features: new developments in Linux-, BSD- or other Spen Source OS kernels
• Networking: protocols, technologies
• Virtualisation/High Availability: OS, networks, cluster, SAN, file services (high-) avialability, OS/storage virtualisation and cloud
• File systems: distributed file systems, cluster file systems, special purpose file systems
• Middleware: databases, application servers, etc.
• IT Security: organisational and technical aspects
• Data Center Infrastructure: climate control, energy efficiency and monitoring
• Operations: monitoring, backup/recovery
• Non-technical Topics: work organisation, legal aspects, licensing and patents, education and training

This year, I'm honoured to be part of the reviewing committee and we've received a number of interesting proposals already. But we'd like to see more!

So please don't hesitate and submit your proposal now!

Thank you.

 

I'm happy to announce the release of mylvmbackup version 0.15. It is now available for download from http://lenzg.net/mylvmbackup/ and https://launchpad.net/mylvmbackup

Probably the biggest highlight of 0.15 is the addition of zbackup as an additional backup type. I'd like to thank Ivan Korjavin for contributing this new feature.

Additionally, this release provides several improvements and bug fixes. For example, it's now possible to back up more than a single my.cnf configuration file by providing a directory name like /etc/mysql instead.

Please see the ChangeLog and bzr history for more details.

Despite my best intentions, I haven't posted on this blog for a while, which is a shame! I've become busy writing on so many other places since I moved into my new role in the Oracle Linux product management team in April. I've learned a lot and I am feeling quite at home here! The team is excellent and very nice to work with — I am slowly getting the "Big Picture".

But even though I've been neglecting this blog, there are a lot of things that are publicly visible and document some of my activites:

I've created two podcasts for the Oracle Linux podcasts:

• OCFS2: Features and Benefits
• Latest Btrfs Updates

In addition to working the @ORCL_Linux Twitter account and FaceBook page, I've been blogging on the Oracle Linux blog:

• Linux Filesystem, Storage and Memory Summit
• Follow us on YouTube and Facebook, too!
• Oracle Linux 6.1 has been released
• Oracle Linux 6.1 ISO images now available for download
• First episode of the Oracle Linux Podcast: Sunil Mushran on OCFS2
• New episode of the Oracle Linux Podcast: Chris Mason on Btrfs
• OTN Sys Admin Days - Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux (Sep. 8th, Sacramento, CA)

From time to time, I'm a guest blogger on the OTN Garage blog:

• Pimp my Ride - Installing Additional Packages on Oracle Linux
• Save disk space on Linux by cloning files on Btrfs and OCFS2

I also created new content and updated pages on the main Oracle web site and the Oracle Technology Network (OTN):

• A new technical white paper about Oracle Linux and the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel
• An article about How to Extract Files from an Oracle Linux RPM Package Without Installing the Package
• Added a new page about our Oracle Linux support offering
• Updated the OCFS2 product page
• Updated the Oracle Linux technical information page.

I've been traveling a bit as well and attended a few conferences where I spoke about Oracle Linux (and MySQL):

• MySQL High Availability at COLLABORATE 11, Orlando (FL), USA
• An introduction to Oracle Linux at the HEPiX Spring 2011 Workshop, Darmstadt, Germany
• What's new in MySQL 5.5 at LinuxTag 2011, Berlin Germany
• Updates on Oracle Linux and Oracle VM at fisl12, Porto Alegre, Brazil

I probably forgot a few things in my reflection of the past few months, but these were some of the highlights.

Check out my followup blog post on what I'm up to in the coming weeks and months!

Linuxtag is likely one of the oldest and largest Linux/OSS events in Germany. I remember having been there to represent SuSE Linux while it still took place at the University of Kaiserslautern, using tables and chairs from the lecture rooms as exhibition stands (this must have been around 1998 or 1999). This year it will take place in Berlin again, and the session schedule looks very promising. I'll be there from Wednesday till Friday and I feel that I will have a hard time deciding which presentations I should attend...

I'll be speaking about What's new in MySQL 5.5 on Friday, 13th of May, at 15:00. If you haven't updated to MySQL 5.5 yet, stop by to hear what new features and improvements have been implemented in this version, which was released in December last year.

In addition to my presentation, there will be two more talks given by Oracle employees:

Wim Coekaerts, SVP of Linux and Virtualization Engineering at Oracle will give the first keynote on Wednesday 11th, 14:00. He'll be talking about Taking Linux into the Clouds — this is a very hot topic and I look forward to this session.

Right afterwards, Dalibor Topic will provide us with an OpenJDK Community Update. If you're a Java developer and you'd like to get the scoop of what's coming, this presentation is one you should not miss!

See you in Berlin!

It was ready for a while already, but now it's part of the official FOSDEM schedule as well: I am very pleased to announce the presentations and speakers of the MySQL & Friends Developer Room, which will take place this coming Saturday (5th of February) in Brussels, Belgium.

This year, our DevRoom will be located in room H.2213 (in the H Building), which has a capacity of up to 100 people and will be available to us from 13:00-19:00 o'clock. We have 12 sessions lined up, each will last 25 minutes (incl. Q&A). Without further ado, here's our schedule:

Time	Speaker	Session Title
13:00-13:25	Lenz Grimmer	Welcome note / What's new in MySQL 5.5
13:30-13:55	Oli Sennhauser	HandlerSocket and similar technologies - NoSQL for MySQL
14:00-14:25	Steve Hardy	Boosting Enterprise MySQL performance: implementing I/O prefetch for InnoDB
14:30-14:55	Istvan Podor	Over 20,000QPS, XtraDB performance show
15:00-15:25	Istvan Podor	Data Recovery for MySQL
15:30-15:55	Kenny Gryp	Taking Backups With XtraBackup
16:00-16:25	Sergey Petrunya	New query optimizer features in MariaDB
16:30-16:55	Lenz Grimmer	MySQL 5.5 Replication Enhancements: an overview
17:00-17:25	Giuseppe Maxia	Seamless MySQL replication failover with Tungsten
17:30-17:55	Petya Kohts	Multimaster MySQL failover
18:00-18:25	Seppo Jaakola	Multi-Master Replication Approaches
18:30-18:55	Stéphane Combaudon	A practical overview of Maatkit

I would like to thank all speakers for their submissions and for the efforts they are willing to go through in order to make it to this event! If you happen to be at FOSDEM this year, please stop by and join us.

We also plan to head out for a meetup over dinner after the event. If you would like to attend, please register, so we can take you into account! (Thanks a lot for Kenny Gryp for organizing this meetup)

I've been going through our bugs database to compile a list of some noteworthy patch contributions that have been included in the MySQL 5.5 release. Of course any contribution is appreciated, no matter how small! And the list is probably not complete — please let me know if I'm missing any. I omitted a number of smaller patches that fixed compile issues and I only considered contributions that were tracked in our bug database and were tagged as "Contribution".

Note that these are new patches that have not been part of any other MySQL release — of course, all contributions from previous releases are included in 5.5 as well. We also received a few patches for InnoDB (particularly by Mark Callaghan and his team mates at Google/Facebook), which were incorporated in the InnoDB plugin in MySQL 5.1 (and hence got included in the InnoDB version of MySQL 5.5, too).

Here they are, in no particular order:

• BUG#13175: SHA2 function (Patch contributed by Bill Karwin)
• BUG#14104: FLUSH LOGS now takes an optional log_type value so that FLUSH log_type LOGS can be used to flush only a specified log type. (Patch contributed by Eric Bergen)
• BUG#27249: Aliases for wildcards (as in SELECT t.* AS 'alias' FROM t) are no longer accepted and result in an error. Previously, such aliases were ignored silently. (Patch contributed by Martin Friebe)
• BUG#40368: mysqld_safe did not honor underscores in the same way as dashes for server options (Patch contributed by Erik Ljungstrom)
• BUG#45767: Removal of Field::pack_key, Field::unpack_key, Field::pack_cmp storage engine functions (Patch contributed by Zardosht Kasheff)
• BUG#50057: SHOW PROFILE CPU port for Windows (Patch contributed by Alex Budkovski)
• BUG#5724: "mysqladmin password" prompts for a password when none is provided on the command line (Patch contributed by Harrison Fisk)
• BUG#26780: A new mysql client option "--auto-vertical-output", which causes the client to test whether a result table is too wide for the current window (where available) and emit vertical results in that case. (Patch contributed by Eric Bergen)

A big "Thank you" to all the contributors!

Am 5.+6. Februar 2011 findet in Brüssel die "Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting" (FOSDEM) - Konferenz statt. Auch im nächsten Jahr wird es wieder einen "Developer Room" zum Thema MySQL geben. Unter dem Motto "MySQL & Friends" möchten wir ein umfangreiches Programm an Vorträgen rund um den MySQL Server zusammenstellen, mit dem wir Entwickler und MySQL-Administratoren gleichermaßen ansprechen wollen.

Jeder Vortrag wird 20 Minuten dauern (plus 5 Minuten Q&A). Es sind insgesamt 12 Slots zu vergeben. Der Call for Papers ist bereits eröffnet - Vorschläge für Vorträge (in englischer Sprache) können bis Sonntag, 26. Dezember hier eingereicht werden.

Weitere Informationen gibt es auf dem MySQL Forge Wiki und dem englischen Call for Papers.

Ich freue mich auf Eure Themenvorschläge!

It's that time of the year again — the nice folks at FOSDEM have granted us a developer room at their upcoming conference (February 5+6 2011 in Brussels, Belgium)!

As usual there were more applications than they were able to accommodate, so we are very grateful for this opportunity for collaboration. Titled "MySQL and Friends", our room next year will be H.2213 with a capacity of 100 seats. It will be at our disposal on Saturday 5th, from 13:00 till 19:00. Like last year, we would like to set up a schedule of talks related to the MySQL server and the various projects that surround it. Each talk will last 20 minutes, plus 5 minutes of Q&A and a 5 minute break for switching speakers, giving us 12 slots in total to fill with excellent tech talks. Take a look at this year's schedule for some examples! I hope we can assemble an even more exciting and interesting schedule for next year.

Quoting from my last year's call for papers:

We are looking for covering a wide range of topics that attract both MySQL DBAs as well as application developers that work with MySQL as their database of choice. Are you developing a new storage engine or other plugin? Do you want to share your experiences and best practices in administering or deploying MySQL servers? Did you develop a new method to scale a MySQL setup? Let us and the audience know about it! You can submit your talk proposal via this submission form.

The deadline for turning in your proposal is Sunday, 26th of December, 2010, after which there will be a voting and rating period to identify the most interesting and attractive topics.

Please check the FOSDEM 2011 information page on the MySQL Forge Wiki for more details and don't hesitate to contact me directly, if you have any questions or suggestions. I look forward to your proposals!

The UK Oracle User Group (UKOUG) is an independent non-profit organisation of users of Oracle products in the UK, which organizes over 80 events per year all across the UK and Ireland. They have more that 15.000 members and were established over 25 years ago. Currently, they are in the final stretch of the preparations for their annual Technology & E-Business Conference, which will take place from November, 29th - December, 1st in Birmingham (UK).

For the first time, the conference will host a dedicated stream of presentations related to MySQL, which is scheduled for Wednesday (Dec. 1st). Targeted at database administrators, developers as well as users new to MySQL, there will be presentations from well-known speakers and participants of the MySQL community as well as members of the MySQL Team at Oracle.

Attendees will learn about best practices and gain valuable insight into the MySQL Server and related applications and tools.

Highlights include a keynote about the Oracle strategy and plans for MySQL by Richard Mason, Vice President of MySQL Sales and Consulting at Oracle, talks about High Availability with MySQL and MySQL Cluster as well as InnoDB Performance Tuning best practices. Other sessions will cover related products and projects from the MySQL ecosystem, that help to make the most of MySQL. See the full agenda on the conference web site for details and speaker information.

Registration for the event is still open. Get your tickets now!

Vorab ein Disclaimer: nein, ich bin nicht auf der Suche nach einen neuen Job

Ich habe auf der FrOSCon am letzten Wochenende Lukas Chaplin endlich mal persönlich getroffen, nachdem wir schon seit längerem in Online-Kontakt standen. Er betreibt das Job-Portal Linux Lancers (powered by MySQL), auf dem Stellenanzeigen mit dem Schwerpunkt auf Unix-, Linux- und Open Source-Jobs veröffentlicht werden. Dieses Jahr waren sie auf der FrOSCon als Gold-Sponsor und Aussteller vertreten und hatten wohl immer viel zu tun.

Ich finde diese Idee sehr gut – es zeigt, daß die Arbeit an und mit Open Source Software durchaus keine brotlose Kunst ist und Know-How in vielen Bereichen dringend gesucht wird. Mir ist bisher kein weiteres Portal mit diesem Fokus bekannt. Eine Suche nach "MySQL" liefert viele Hits, quer über die Republik verteilt. Kenntnisse und Erfahrung mit Opensource-Technologien zahlen sich aus! Die Website ist noch in einer frühen Betaphase, aber das machen die Inhalte wieder wett. Laut Lukas ist ein Relaunch des Portals in Arbeit, bei dem sowohl die Suchlogik als auch die Darstellung der Suchergebnisse überarbeitet wird.

With OpenSQL Camp and FrOSCon being over for almost a week now, it's time to come up with a short summary. I traveled home on Monday morning and then took Tuesday off, so I had some catching up to do...

As for the past years, FrOSCon rocked again! According to the closing keynote, they had around 1.500 (unique) visitors and I had a great time there. I really enjoyed meeting all the old and new faces of the various Open Source communities. The lineup of speakers was excellent, Jon "maddog" Hall's keynote about "Free and Open Source Software in the Developing World" was quite insightful and inspiring.

Most of the time I was busy with speaking at and running the OpenSQL Camp session track in room "HS6", but I managed to sneak out and listen to a few other talks as well. Additionally, I gave a presentation about ZFS on Linux, which had a good crowd and some interesting discussions.

This year, all of the sessions in the main lecture halls were streamed live, so people not able to attend could at least get a glimpse on what was going on these two days. Many times it was a really tough decision to make – there were way too many good sessions going in parallel. So being able to see the recording afterwards somewhat relieved that pain. The FrOSCon team has already begun to publish the video files – they are separated by day and lecture room and can be obtained from http://froscon.tv/.

And we were really lucky with the weather, too - the weekend was warm and sunny, a perfect setting for the social event, which is one of the highlights of FrOSCon. Impressive: this year, the attendees consumed one cubic meter (1000 liters) of Beer!

Finally, I'd like to express my special gratitude to all the speakers of OpenSQL Camp – thank you very much for your support and for devoting your time to participate in our subconference! It was appreciated.

Greetings from Sankt Augustin, Germany! I've arrived by train today and just returned from the FrOSCon venue, which will start tomorrow. The organizers are still busy with the preparations, but things already seem to be in good shape.

It was a mild and sunny evening today. Hopefully it will be the same tomorrow again, so we can enjoy a relaxed BBQ outside! The social event at FrOSCon is always a nice opportunity to meet and talk with fellow open source enthusiasts, users and developers.

And finally some good news for those of you who can't make it to FrOSCon this year: there will be live video streams from selected lecture rooms! So you will be able to attend the OpenSQL Camp sessions virtually - just head over to http://live.froscon.org/ and select room "HS6". It'll be interesting to see how this will work out.

Ich möchte nur kurz auf einige Konferenzen mit MySQL-Inhalten aufmerksam machen, die in der nächsten Zeit so anstehen:

Am nächsten Wochenende (21. und 22. August) findet in Sankt Augustin bei Bonn die Free and Open Source Software Conference (FrOSCon) statt. Auch in diesem Jahr wird es wieder einen von mir organisierten Track namens "OpenSQL Camp" geben. Es wird insgesamt 12 Vorträge rund um das Thema MySQL und andere Open-Source Datenbanken geben. Darüberhinaus haben die Veranstalter der FrOSCon einen dedizierten Track zum Thema "NoSQL Datenbanken" zusammengestellt. Es wird also reichlich Information zum Thema Datenbanken auf der FrOSCon geben!

Ich habe übrigens 10 Freikarten für die FrOSCon zu vergeben, die Teil unseres Sponsoring-Pakets sind (MySQL/Oracle ist Silber-Sponsor). Wer Interesse hat, sollte sich schnell bei mir per E-Mail melden – first come, first serve!

Das nächste OpenSQL Camp findet dann wieder in den USA statt, und zwar vom 15. bis 17. Oktober in Boston.

Davor gibt es noch einen Pflichttermin in den USA – die im September in San Francisco stattfindende Oracle OpenWorld, die dieses Mal gleich mehrere Konferenzen unter einem Dach anbietet: neben der "klassischen OpenWorld" wird es die Java One und Oracle Develop Entwicklerkonferenzen sowie den MySQL Sunday geben. Besonders letzterer verspricht interessant zu werden, es haben viele namhafte Speaker aus der MySQL-Community zugesagt.

Herbst und Winter ist traditionell Hochsaison was Konferenzen angeht, und auch dieses Jahr wird wieder einiges geboten. Seit der Übernahme von MySQL durch Oracle zeigen sich besonders die diversen Oracle-Anwendergruppen sehr stark daran interessiert, das Thema MySQL aufzugreifen. Nach der ODTUG Kaleidoscope, die im Juni/Juli in den USA stattfand, stehen nun die DOAG Konferenz in Nürnberg (16.-18. November) und die UKOUG Conference Series Technology & E-Business Suite 2010 in Birmingham (29. November - 1. Dezember) an, die ebenfalls dedizierte Vortragsreihen zum Thema MySQL anbieten werden. Achtung: für die Konferenz in England können noch bis kommenden Montag Vortragsvorschläge eingereicht werden! Wir freuen uns über jeden Beitrag.

If you wonder why there hasn't been an update from me for quite a while — I just returned from two months of paternal leave, in which I actually managed to stay away from the PC most of the time. In the meanwhile, I've officially become an Oracle employee and there is a lot of administrative things to take care of... But it feels good to be back!

During my absence, Giuseppe and Felix kicked off the Call for Papers for this year's European OpenSQL Camp, which will again take place in parallel to FrOSCon in St. Augustin (Germany) on August 21st/22nd. We've received a number of great submissions, now we would like to ask our community about your favourites!

Basically it's "one vote per person per session" and you can cast your votes in two ways, either by twittering @opensqlcamp or via the opensqlcamp mailing list. The procedure is outlined in more detail on this wiki page.

As we need to finalize the schedule and inform the speakers, the voting period will close this coming Sunday, 18th of July. So don't hesitate, cast your votes now! Based on your feedback we will compile the session schedule for this year's camp. Thanks for your help!