11 Jun

A security flaw in MySQL authentication. Is your system vulnerable?

A few days ago Sergei Golubchik of Monty Program sent an e-mail to the Open Source Security mailing list informing about a security vulnerability in MySQL authentication system. Under certain circumstances a remote attacker may easily gain access to MySQL database as any user and all they need to know is a valid user name (e.g. root user exists in nearly all installations). The problem has only been addressed in the most recent database versions.

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02 Jun

How to find MySQL binary logs, error logs, temporary files?

Have you ever spent a lot of time trying to locate where MySQL keeps some file? Here is a quick way to find all this information in one place.

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31 May

MySQL, OOM Killer, and everything related

Do the operating systems kill your MySQL instances from time to time? Are some database servers swapping constantly? These are relatively common problems. Why? How to prevent them?

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22 May

Install and configure MySQL on EC2 with RedHat Linux

Recently I had to turn a few EC2 instances into MySQL database servers. The third time I had to do it, I grabbed the list of steps from my previous sessions and just replayed it. Later I thought maybe polishing information a little bit and publishing a step-by-step walkthrough on the blog may help a few people. So here it is.

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22 May

An elaborate way to break a MySQL server with XtraBackup

XtraBackup is a great piece of software from Percona, which allows creating (nearly) lock-less MySQL/InnoDB backups. The tool has been around for quite some time and recently even received a major version bump. I have relied on it many times over the years. As it turns out, using it in some configurations may lead to heavy swapping or prevent MySQL from running queries.

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