Chris White wrote:
Here's the initial devspace draft of the new MySQL draft I've been working on:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~chriswhite/mysql.html

Comments, etc are welcome.


Mysql is bound to localhost by default in Gentoo. I'd add a note and make it blink in gigantic neon letters. That's the number one problem users have in the forums. An explanation of how to change that in the my.cnf and some of the security implications of that would probably be a good idea as well.

Adding privileges for remote users. You do a good job with adding access from localhost, but there isn't any mention of adding access for a user from any IP. Additionally it might be nice to show how to allow a user access from a particular subnet as well a single IP. You may also want to mention that things like phpmyadmin should connect to localhost if they are on the same server instead of the hostname which is a common mistake.

The root user is just a convention. I've also seen a number of post where users seem to think that the root user is somehow special in Mysql rather than a Gentoo/distro default user that has been granted admin privileges. You might want to shoot for a much broader explanation of users accounts than what you currently have mostly centering around the fact that Mysql accounts are separate from system accounts.

On the subject of USE variables you may want to mention that in 4.0.x innodb is not turned on by default while in 4.1.x or greater it will be due to a request from upstream. Also mention that innodb will need to be turned on within the my.cnf file as it is not on by default.

Another common forum question is how to completely remove all Mysql databases and start from scratch though there might be less call for this if users are able to set Mysql up correctly from the get go. How to reset the admin password is another common question in the same vein.

If you're aiming for a more complete doc, you might also want to demonstrate a SELECT * FROM $table WHERE $field LIKE '%$string%' as that's another handy select beginners will find useful. Also adding LIMIT 10 or COUNT (*) are other good ones. Some mention of mysqldump and restoring from a dump might also be interesting. myisamchk and turning on bin-logs for data recovery if needed would also be nice. And finally the default my.cnf isn't tuned towards a dedicated Mysql installation. Users may want to at my-huge.cnf in /usr/share/doc/mysql-version/conf-sampples. Most of this last part is probably way outside your planned scope, but it is stuff that has come up on the forums.

All in all this is a well written and readable doc. It'll help a number of users. Nice job.

kashani
--
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Reply via email to