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Mysql Federated tables and Oracle Database links

Taking time out from the Big Migration job to share this with you, and before you say anything *I Know* this is old news, but forgive me because I've been away from MySQL for 4 years, and just because you know this doesn't mean that there aren't other "late adopters" like me out there.

Over the past few weeks I've come across quite a few posts on the net from folks who wanted to use oracle style links between MySQL databases (I don't need to, I just spoted a theme). Researching the storage engines in Mysql 5 (we're upgrading as well as migrating) it seems there is now an answer in the form of the Federated storage engine.

The article also provided me an answer for the perennial problem of needing several instances of MySQL in dev and test, often for exactly the task currently at hand, migrating from one version to another, that answer is the mysql sandbox. Neat. Its a shame that I've already set up my dev environment, I'd like to play with that.

Sony Bricks PS3's

Sam, who sits opposite me at work, tells me that the latest firmware update for the PS3 was bricking boxes yesterday until they recalled it. Her better half didn't manage to download it in time, lucky for them.

Apparently calls to Sony support (in the uk at least) were met with the response "we'll come and collect it".

I guess my nearest and dearest were actually saving me a headache when the didn't buy me one.

You can read a bit about it here.

Apache httpd & SELinux

I'll admit straight away here that SELinux was news to me 6mths ago when I installed Centos5 (RHEL5 equivalent) for the first time. Since then I've found out a little, mainly because I had to.

SELinux lurks like a rake in the grass and whangs you on the noggin just when you're 100% sure you know what you're doing.

For example SELinux was the culprit when a pretty simple perl DBI script wasn't allowed to connect to a remote database when run as a CGI script, but the same script worked fine as a shell script. And the error was no more than an unhelpful and inscruitable "Can't create TCP/IP socket (13)".

Its been a real pain, so here are two things you may wish to read...

When pain strikes reach for: How to Disable SELinux turning it off is a sure fire way to find out if it really is an SELinux problem.

Then when you want to turn it back on again read this: Apache and SELinux to find out how to configure it to allow httpd to do some things without opening the door to everything.