[Ubuntu-ZW] the beginning of the end for mysql?

[Kalpesh Thaker]

Hi Guys.

Sorry this is an off topic email.. not really concering ubuntu, but rather
mysql.

Early this morning i upgraded Mysql server on our debian 6 boxes, and
immediately i was prompted with the message at the bottom of this email..

After doing research about it, it seems oracle have once again decided to
play the proprietary card with mysql, by keeping all
security related issues with mysql under a non-disclosure type of
arrangement.

For those of you out there who run heavy mysql applications, it might be
worth to keep track of what is going on, as several incompatibilities have
begun to surface from this hidden security patching that Oracle are doing
with updates.

Already two possible mysql forks have been put forward as a backward
compatible replacement for mysql...namely MariaDB and Percona Server

more info can be found on the following sites and forums:

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-mysql-maint/2012-February/003866.html

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-q-mysql-roundtable

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/news-5-1-x.html

some of these links point to debian related info, but should still be
relevant to the ubuntu crowd, as
ubuntu use some of the same packages on their LTS distro's.

regards

kalpesh

-----------------------

*"Due to the non-disclosure of security patch information from Oracle,
 we are forced to ship this upstream version update of MySQL 5.1 into
 all releases that carry MySQL 5.1. There are several known incompatible
 changes, which are listed below, taken from dev.mysql.com's changelogs,
 available here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/news-5-1-x.html
 5.1.51:
  Incompatible Change: Previously, if you flushed the logs using FLUSH
  LOGS or mysqladmin flush-logs and mysqld was writing the error log to
  a file (for example, if it was started with the --log-error option),
  it renamed the current log file with the suffix -old, then created a
  new empty log file. This had the problem that a second log-flushing
  operation thus caused the original error log file to be lost unless
  you saved it under a different name. For example, you could use the
  following commands to save the file:
  .
  shell> mysqladmin flush-logs
  shell> mv host_name.err-old backup-directory
  .
  To avoid the preceding file-loss problem, renaming no longer
  occurs. The server merely closes and reopens the log file. To rename
  the file, you can do so manually before flushing. Then flushing the
  logs reopens a new file with the original file name. For example, you
  can rename the file and create a new one using the following commands:
  .
  shell> mv host_name.err host_name.err-old
  shell> mysqladmin flush-logs
  shell> mv host_name.err-old backup-directory
  .
  (Bug #29751)
  .
  References: See also Bug #56821.
 5.1.55:
  Incompatible Change: When auto_increment_increment is greater than
  one, values generated by a bulk insert that reaches the maximum
  column value could wrap around rather producing an overflow error.
  .
  As a consequence of the fix, it is no longer possible for an
  auto-generated value to be equal to the maximum BIGINT UNSIGNED
  value. It is still possible to store that value manually, if the
  column can accept it. (Bug #39828, Bug #11749800)
 5.1.59:
  Incompatible Change: Handling of a date-related assertion was
  modified.
  .
  However, a consequence of this change is that several functions
  become more strict when passed a DATE() function value as their
  argument and reject incomplete dates with a day part of zero. These
  functions are affected: CONVERT_TZ(), DATE_ADD(), DATE_SUB(),
  DAYOFYEAR(), LAST_DAY(), TIMESTAMPDIFF(), TO_DAYS(), TO_SECONDS(),
  WEEK(), WEEKDAY(), WEEKOFYEAR(), YEARWEEK(). Because this changes
  date-handling behavior in General Availability-status series (MySQL
  5.1 and 5.5), it was reverted in 5.1.62 and 5.5.21. The change is
  retained in MySQL 5.6.
  .
  References: See also Bug #13458237.
-- Clint Byrum <clint at ubuntu.com>  Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:25:34 -0800"*
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