This appendix will help you port MySQL to other operating systems. Do check the list of currently supported operating systems first. See section 2.2.5 Operating Systems Supported by MySQL. If you have created a new port of MySQL, please let us know so that we can list it here and on our web site (http://www.mysql.com/), recommending it to other users.
Note: If you create a new port of MySQL, you are free to copy and
distribute it under the GPL license, but it does not make you a
copyright holder of MySQL.
A working Posix thread library is needed for the server. On Solaris 2.5 we use Sun PThreads (the native thread support in 2.4 and earlier versions is not good enough), on Linux we use LinuxThreads by Xavier Leroy, Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr.
The hard part of porting to a new Unix variant without good native thread support is probably to port MIT-pthreads. See `mit-pthreads/README' and Programming POSIX Threads (http://www.humanfactor.com/pthreads/).
Up to MySQL 4.0.2, the MySQL distribution included a patched version of Chris Provenzano's Pthreads from MIT (see the MIT Pthreads web page at http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/pthreads/ and a programming introduction at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/proven/IAP_2000/). These can be used for some operating systems that do not have POSIX threads. See section 2.3.6 MIT-pthreads Notes.
It is also possible to use another user level thread package named FSU Pthreads (see http://moss.csc.ncsu.edu/~mueller/pthreads/). This implementation is being used for the SCO port.
See the `thr_lock.c' and `thr_alarm.c' programs in the `mysys' directory for some tests/examples of these problems.
Both the server and the client need a working C++ compiler. We use gcc
on many platforms. Other compilers that are known to work are SPARCworks,
Sun Forte, Irix cc, HP-UX aCC, IBM AIX xlC_r), Intel
ecc and Compaq cxx).
To compile only the client use ./configure --without-server.
There is currently no support for only compiling the server, nor is it likly to be added unless someone has a good reason for it.
If you want/need to change any `Makefile' or the configure script you will also need GNU Automake and Autoconf. See section 2.3.4 Installing from the Development Source Tree.
All steps needed to remake everything from the most basic files.
/bin/rm */.deps/*.P /bin/rm -f config.cache aclocal autoheader aclocal automake autoconf ./configure --with-debug=full --prefix='your installation directory' # The makefiles generated above need GNU make 3.75 or newer. # (called gmake below) gmake clean all install init-db
If you run into problems with a new port, you may have to do some debugging of MySQL! See section E.1 Debugging a MySQL server.
Note: before you start debugging mysqld, first get the test
programs mysys/thr_alarm and mysys/thr_lock to work. This
will ensure that your thread installation has even a remote chance to work!
If you are using some functionality that is very new in MySQL,
you can try to run mysqld with the --skip-new (which will disable all
new, potentially unsafe functionality) or with --safe-mode which
disables a lot of optimisation that may cause problems.
See section A.4.1 What To Do If MySQL Keeps Crashing.
If mysqld doesn't want to start, you should check that you don't have
any `my.cnf' files that interfere with your setup!
You can check your `my.cnf' arguments with mysqld --print-defaults
and avoid using them by starting with mysqld --no-defaults ....
If mysqld starts to eat up CPU or memory or if it ``hangs'', you
can use mysqladmin processlist status to find out if someone is
executing a query that takes a long time. It may be a good idea to
run mysqladmin -i10 processlist status in some window if you are
experiencing performance problems or problems when new clients can't connect.
The command mysqladmin debug will dump some information about
locks in use, used memory and query usage to the mysql log file. This
may help solve some problems. This command also provides some useful
information even if you haven't compiled MySQL for debugging!
If the problem is that some tables are getting slower and slower you
should try to optimise the table with OPTIMIZE TABLE or
myisamchk. See section 4 Database Administration. You should also
check the slow queries with EXPLAIN.
You should also read the OS-specific section in this manual for problems that may be unique to your environment. See section 2.6 Operating System Specific Notes.
If you have some very specific problem, you can always try to debug
MySQL. To do this you must configure MySQL with the
--with-debug or the --with-debug=full option. You can check
whether MySQL was compiled with debugging by doing:
mysqld --help. If the --debug flag is listed with the
options then you have debugging enabled. mysqladmin ver also
lists the mysqld version as mysql ... --debug in this case.
If you are using gcc or egcs, the recommended configure line is:
CC=gcc CFLAGS="-O2" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O2 -felide-constructors \ -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql \ --with-debug --with-extra-charsets=complex
This will avoid problems with the libstdc++ library and with C++
exceptions (many compilers have problems with C++ exceptions in threaded
code) and compile a MySQL version with support for all character sets.
If you suspect a memory overrun error, you can configure MySQL
with --with-debug=full, which will install a memory allocation
(SAFEMALLOC) checker. Running with SAFEMALLOC is however
quite slow, so if you get performance problems you should start
mysqld with the --skip-safemalloc option. This will
disable the memory overrun checks for each call to malloc() and
free().
If mysqld stops crashing when you compile it with
--with-debug, you have probably found a compiler bug or a timing
bug within MySQL. In this case you can try to add -g to
the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables above and not use
--with-debug. If mysqld now dies, you can at least attach
to it with gdb or use gdb on the core file to find out
what happened.
When you configure MySQL for debugging you automatically enable a
lot of extra safety check functions that monitor the health of mysqld.
If they find something ``unexpected,'' an entry will be written to
stderr, which safe_mysqld directs to the error log! This also
means that if you are having some unexpected problems with MySQL and
are using a source distribution, the first thing you should do is to
configure MySQL for debugging! (The second thing, of course, is to
send mail to a MySQL mailing list and ask for help.
See section 1.6.1.1 The MySQL Mailing Lists.
Please use the
mysqlbug script for all bug reports or questions regarding the
MySQL version you are using!
In the Windows MySQL distribution, mysqld.exe is by
default compiled with support for trace files.
If the mysqld server doesn't start or if you can cause the
mysqld server to crash quickly, you can try to create a trace
file to find the problem.
To do this you have to have a mysqld that is compiled for debugging.
You can check this by executing mysqld -V. If the version number
ends with -debug, it's compiled with support for trace files.
Start the mysqld server with a trace log in `/tmp/mysqld.trace'
(or `C:\mysqld.trace' on Windows):
mysqld --debug
On Windows you should also use the --standalone flag to not start
mysqld as a service:
In a console window do:
mysqld --debug --standalone
After this you can use the mysql.exe command-line tool in a
second console window to reproduce the problem. You can take down the above
mysqld server with mysqladmin shutdown.
Note that the trace file will get very big! If you want to have a smaller trace file, you can use something like:
mysqld --debug=d,info,error,query,general,where:O,/tmp/mysqld.trace
which only prints information with the most interesting tags in `/tmp/mysqld.trace'.
If you make a bug report about this, please only send the lines from the trace file to the appropriate mailing list where something seems to go wrong! If you can't locate the wrong place, you can ftp the trace file, together with a full bug report, to ftp://support.mysql.com/pub/mysql/secret/ so that a MySQL developer can take a look a this.
The trace file is made with the DBUG package by Fred Fish. See section E.3 The DBUG Package.
On most systems you can also start mysqld from gdb to get
more information if mysqld crashes.
With some older gdb versions on Linux you must use run
--one-thread if you want to be able to debug mysqld threads. In
this case you can only have one thread active at a time. We recommend you
to upgrade to gdb 5.1 ASAP as thread debugging works much better with this
version!
When running mysqld under gdb, you should disable the stack trace
with --skip-stack-trace to be able to catch segfaults within gdb.
In MySQL 4.0.14 and above you should use the --gdb option to
mysqld. This will install an interrupt handler for SIGINT (needed
to stop mysqld with ^C to set breakpoints) and disable stack
tracing and core file handling.
It's very hard to debug MySQL under gdb if you do a lot of
new connections the whole time as gdb doesn't free the memory for
old threads. You can avoid this problem by starting mysqld with
-O thread_cache_size= 'max_connections +1'. In most cases just
using -O thread_cache_size=5' will help a lot!
If you want to get a core dump on Linux if mysqld dies with a
SIGSEGV signal, you can start mysqld with the --core-file option.
This core file can be used to make a backtrace that may help you
find out why mysqld died:
shell> gdb mysqld core gdb> backtrace full gdb> exit
See section A.4.1 What To Do If MySQL Keeps Crashing.
If you are using gdb 4.17.x or above on Linux, you should install a `.gdb' file, with the following information, in your current directory:
set print sevenbit off handle SIGUSR1 nostop noprint handle SIGUSR2 nostop noprint handle SIGWAITING nostop noprint handle SIGLWP nostop noprint handle SIGPIPE nostop handle SIGALRM nostop handle SIGHUP nostop handle SIGTERM nostop noprint
If you have problems debugging threads with gdb, you should download gdb 5.x and try this instead. The new gdb version has very improved thread handling!
Here is an example how to debug mysqld:
shell> gdb /usr/local/libexec/mysqld gdb> run ... backtrace full # Do this when mysqld crashes
Include the above output in a mail generated with mysqlbug and
mail this to the general MySQL mailing list.
See section 1.6.1.1 The MySQL Mailing Lists.
If mysqld hangs you can try to use some system tools like
strace or /usr/proc/bin/pstack to examine where
mysqld has hung.
strace /tmp/log libexec/mysqld
If you are using the Perl DBI interface, you can turn on
debugging information by using the trace method or by
setting the DBI_TRACE environment variable.
See section 9.5.2 The DBI Interface.
On some operating systems, the error log will contain a stack trace if
mysqld dies unexpectedly. You can use this to find out where (and
maybe why) mysqld died. See section 4.9.1 The Error Log. To get a stack trace,
you must not compile mysqld with the -fomit-frame-pointer
option to gcc. See section E.1.1 Compiling MYSQL for Debugging.
If the error file contains something like the following:
mysqld got signal 11; The manual section 'Debugging a MySQL server' tells you how to use a stack trace and/or the core file to produce a readable backtrace that may help in finding out why mysqld died Attemping backtrace. You can use the following information to find out where mysqld died. If you see no messages after this, something went terribly wrong stack range sanity check, ok, backtrace follows 0x40077552 0x81281a0 0x8128f47 0x8127be0 0x8127995 0x8104947 0x80ff28f 0x810131b 0x80ee4bc 0x80c3c91 0x80c6b43 0x80c1fd9 0x80c1686
you can find where mysqld died by doing the following:
mysqld server:
nm -n libexec/mysqld > /tmp/mysqld.symNote that most MySQL binary distributions (except for the "debug" packages, where this information is included inside of the binaries themselves) already ship with the above file, named
mysqld.sym.gz.
In this case you can simply unpack it by doing:
gunzip < bin/mysqld.sym.gz > /tmp/mysqld.sym
resolve_stack_dump -s /tmp/mysqld.sym -n mysqld.stack.
This will print out where mysqld died. If this doesn't help you
find out why mysqld died, you should make a bug report and include
the output from the above command with the bug report.
Note however that in most cases it will not help us to just have a stack
trace to find the reason for the problem. To be able to locate the bug
or provide a workaround, we would in most cases need to know the query
that killed mysqld and preferable a test case so that we can
repeat the problem! See section 1.6.1.3 How to Report Bugs or Problems.
Note that before starting mysqld with --log you should
check all your tables with myisamchk.
See section 4 Database Administration.
If mysqld dies or hangs, you should start mysqld with
--log. When mysqld dies again, you can examine the end of
the log file for the query that killed mysqld.
If you are using --log without a file name, the log is stored in
the database directory as 'hostname'.log In most cases it's the last
query in the log file that killed mysqld, but if possible you
should verify this by restarting mysqld and executing the found
query from the mysql command-line tools. If this works, you
should also test all complicated queries that didn't complete.
You can also try the command EXPLAIN on all SELECT
statements that takes a long time to ensure that mysqld is using
indexes properly. See section 5.2.1 EXPLAIN Syntax (Get Information About a SELECT).
You can find the queries that take a long time to execute by starting
mysqld with --log-slow-queries. See section 4.9.5 The Slow Query Log.
If you find the text mysqld restarted in the error log file
(normally named `hostname.err') you have probably found a query
that causes mysqld to fail. If this happens you should check all
your tables with myisamchk (see section 4 Database Administration),
and test the queries in the MySQL log files to see if one doesn't
work. If you find such a query, try first upgrading to the newest
MySQL version. If this doesn't help and you can't find anything
in the mysql mail archive, you should report the bug to a MySQL
mailing list.
The mailing lists are described at
http://lists.mysql.com/, which also has links to online
list archives.
If you have started mysqld with myisam-recover,
MySQL will automatically check and try to repair MyISAM
tables if they are marked as 'not closed properly' or 'crashed'. If
this happens, MySQL will write an entry in the
hostname.err file 'Warning: Checking table ...' which is
followed by Warning: Repairing table if the table needs to be
repaired. If you get a lot of these errors, without mysqld having
died unexpectedly just before, then something is wrong and needs to
be investigated further. See section 4.1.1 mysqld Command-line Options.
It's of course not a good sign if mysqld did died unexpectedly,
but in this case one shouldn't investigate the Checking table...
messages but instead try to find out why mysqld died.
If you get corrupted tables or if mysqld always fails after some
update commands, you can test if this bug is reproducible by doing the
following:
mysqladmin shutdown).
myisamchk -s database/*.MYI. Repair any
wrong tables with myisamchk -r database/table.MYI.
mysqld with --log-bin. See section 4.9.4 The Binary Log.
If you want to find a query that crashes mysqld, you should use
--log --log-bin.
mysqld server.
mysqld server without --log-bin
mysqlbinlog update-log-file | mysql.
The update log is saved in the MySQL database directory with
the name hostname-bin.#.
mysqld to die with the
above command, you have found reproducible bug that should be easy to
fix! FTP the tables and the binary log to
ftp://support.mysql.com/pub/mysql/secret/ and enter it into
our bugs system at http://bugs.mysql.com/.
If you are a support customer), you can also support@mysql.com to
alert the MySQL team about the problem and have it fixed as soon as possible.
You can also use the script mysql_find_rows to just execute some of the
update statements if you want to narrow down the problem.
To be able to debug a MySQL client with the integrated debug package,
you should configure MySQL with --with-debug or
--with-debug=full. See section 2.3.3 Typical configure Options.
Before running a client, you should set the MYSQL_DEBUG environment
variable:
shell> MYSQL_DEBUG=d:t:O,/tmp/client.trace shell> export MYSQL_DEBUG
This causes clients to generate a trace file in `/tmp/client.trace'.
If you have problems with your own client code, you should attempt to
connect to the server and run your query using a client that is known to
work. Do this by running mysql in debugging mode (assuming you
have compiled MySQL with debugging on):
shell> mysql --debug=d:t:O,/tmp/client.trace
This will provide useful information in case you mail a bug report. See section 1.6.1.3 How to Report Bugs or Problems.
If your client crashes at some 'legal' looking code, you should check that your `mysql.h' include file matches your mysql library file. A very common mistake is to use an old `mysql.h' file from an old MySQL installation with new MySQL library.
The MySQL server and most MySQL clients are compiled with the DBUG package originally made by Fred Fish. When one has configured MySQL for debugging, this package makes it possible to get a trace file of what the program is debugging. See section E.1.2 Creating Trace Files.
One uses the debug package by invoking the program with the
--debug="..." or the -#... option.
Most MySQL programs has a default debug string that will be
used if you don't specify an option to --debug. The default
trace file is usually /tmp/programname.trace on Unix and
\programname.trace on Windows.
The debug control string is a sequence of colon-separated fields as follows:
<field_1>:<field_2>:...:<field_N>
Each field consists of a mandatory flag character followed by an optional "," and comma-separated list of modifiers:
flag[,modifier,modifier,...,modifier]
The currently recognised flag characters are:
| Flag | Description |
| d | Enable output from DBUG_<N> macros for the current state. May be followed by a list of keywords which selects output only for the DBUG macros with that keyword. An empty list of keywords implies output for all macros. |
| D | Delay after each debugger output line. The argument is the number of tenths of seconds to delay, subject to machine capabilities. That is, -#D,20 is delay two seconds.
|
| f | Limit debugging and/or tracing, and profiling to the list of named functions. Note that a null list will disable all functions. The appropriate "d" or "t" flags must still be given, this flag only limits their actions if they are enabled. |
| F | Identify the source file name for each line of debug or trace output. |
| i | Identify the process with the pid or thread id for each line of debug or trace output. |
| g | Enable profiling. Create a file called 'dbugmon.out' containing information that can be used to profile the program. May be followed by a list of keywords that select profiling only for the functions in that list. A null list implies that all functions are considered. |
| L | Identify the source file line number for each line of debug or trace output. |
| n | Print the current function nesting depth for each line of debug or trace output. |
| N | Number each line of dbug output. |
| o | Redirect the debugger output stream to the specified file. The default output is stderr. |
| O | As o but the file is really flushed between each write. When needed the file is closed and reopened between each write.
|
| p | Limit debugger actions to specified processes. A process must be identified with the DBUG_PROCESS macro and match one in the list for debugger actions to occur. |
| P | Print the current process name for each line of debug or trace output. |
| r | When pushing a new state, do not inherit the previous state's function nesting level. Useful when the output is to start at the left margin. |
| S | Do function _sanity(_file_,_line_) at each debugged function until _sanity() returns something that differs from 0. (Mostly used with safemalloc to find memory leaks) |
| t | Enable function call/exit trace lines. May be followed by a list (containing only one modifier) giving a numeric maximum trace level, beyond which no output will occur for either debugging or tracing macros. The default is a compile time option. |
Some examples of debug control strings which might appear on a shell command-line (the "-#" is typically used to introduce a control string to an application program) are:
-#d:t -#d:f,main,subr1:F:L:t,20 -#d,input,output,files:n -#d:t:i:O,\\mysqld.trace
In MySQL, common tags to print (with the d option) are:
enter,exit,error,warning,info and
loop.
Currently MySQL only supports table locking for
ISAM/MyISAM and HEAP tables,
page-level locking for BDB tables and
row-level locking for InnoDB tables.
See section 5.3.1 How MySQL Locks Tables.
With MyISAM tables one can freely mix INSERT and
SELECT without locks, if the INSERT statements are non-conflicting
(that is, whenever they append to the end of the table file rather than
filling freespace from deleted rows/data).
Starting in version 3.23.33, you can analyse the table lock contention
on your system by checking Table_locks_waited and
Table_locks_immediate environment variables.
To decide if you want to use a table type with row-level locking, you will want to look at what the application does and what the select/update pattern of the data is.
Pros for row locking:
Cons:
GROUP
BY on a large part of the data or if one has to often scan the whole table.
Table locks are superior to page level / row level locks in the following cases:
UPDATE table_name SET column=value WHERE unique_key# DELETE FROM table_name WHERE unique_key=#
SELECT combined with INSERT (and very few UPDATE
and DELETE statements).
GROUP BY on the whole table without any writers.
Other options than row / page level locking:
Versioning (like we use in MySQL for concurrent inserts) where you can have one writer at the same time as many readers. This means that the database/table supports different views for the data depending on when one started to access it. Other names for this are time travel, copy on write or copy on demand.
Copy on demand is in many case much better than page or row level locking; the worst case does, however, use much more memory than when using normal locks.
Instead of using row level locks one can use application level locks (like get_lock/release_lock in MySQL). This works of course only in well-behaved applications.
In many cases one can do an educated guess which locking type is best for the application, but generally it's very hard to say that a given lock type is better than another; everything depends on the application and different part of the application may require different lock types.
Here are some tips about locking in MySQL:
Most web applications do lots of selects, very few deletes, updates mainly on keys, and inserts in some specific tables. The base MySQL setup is very well tuned for this.
Concurrent users are not a problem if one doesn't mix updates with selects that need to examine many rows in the same table.
If one mixes inserts and deletes on the same table then INSERT DELAYED
may be of great help.
One can also use LOCK TABLES to speed up things (many updates within
a single lock is much faster than updates without locks). Splitting
thing to different tables will also help.
If you get speed problems with the table locks in MySQL, you
may be able to solve these by converting some of your tables to InnoDB
or BDB tables.
See section 7.5 InnoDB Tables. See section 7.6 BDB or BerkeleyDB Tables.
The optimisation section in the manual covers a lot of different aspects of how to tune applications. See section 5.2.13 Other Optimisation Tips.
I have tried to use the RTS thread packages with MySQL but stumbled on the following problems:
They use an old version of a lot of POSIX calls and it is very tedious to make wrappers for all functions. I am inclined to think that it would be easier to change the thread libraries to the newest POSIX specification.
Some wrappers are already written. See `mysys/my_pthread.c' for more info.
At least the following should be changed:
pthread_get_specific should use one argument.
sigwait should take two arguments.
A lot of functions (at least pthread_cond_wait,
pthread_cond_timedwait)
should return the error code on error. Now they return -1 and set errno.
Another problem is that user-level threads use the ALRM signal and this
aborts a lot of functions (read, write, open...).
MySQL should do a retry on interrupt on all of these but it is
not that easy to verify it.
The biggest unsolved problem is the following:
To get thread-level alarms I changed `mysys/thr_alarm.c' to wait between
alarms with pthread_cond_timedwait(), but this aborts with error
EINTR. I tried to debug the thread library as to why this happens,
but couldn't find any easy solution.
If someone wants to try MySQL with RTS threads I suggest the following:
-DHAVE_rts_threads.
thr_alarm.
thr_alarm. If it runs without any ``warning'', ``error'' or aborted
messages, you are on the right track. Here is a successful run on
Solaris:
Main thread: 1 Thread 0 (5) started Thread: 5 Waiting process_alarm Thread 1 (6) started Thread: 6 Waiting process_alarm process_alarm thread_alarm Thread: 6 Slept for 1 (1) sec Thread: 6 Waiting process_alarm process_alarm thread_alarm Thread: 6 Slept for 2 (2) sec Thread: 6 Simulation of no alarm needed Thread: 6 Slept for 0 (3) sec Thread: 6 Waiting process_alarm process_alarm thread_alarm Thread: 6 Slept for 4 (4) sec Thread: 6 Waiting process_alarm thread_alarm Thread: 5 Slept for 10 (10) sec Thread: 5 Waiting process_alarm process_alarm thread_alarm Thread: 6 Slept for 5 (5) sec Thread: 6 Waiting process_alarm process_alarm ... thread_alarm Thread: 5 Slept for 0 (1) sec end
MySQL is very dependent on the thread package used. So when choosing a good platform for MySQL, the thread package is very important.
There are at least three types of thread packages:
ps may show the different threads. If one thread aborts, the
whole process aborts. Most system calls are thread-safe and should
require very little overhead. Solaris, HP-UX, AIX and OSF/1 have kernel
threads.
In some systems kernel threads are managed by integrating user level threads in the system libraries. In such cases, the thread switching can only be done by the thread library and the kernel isn't really ``thread aware''.
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