Ramblings

• @pjf: it’s 12:14pm atm. daylight saving not over for 1 more week #
• @pjf my phone thought it was over… computer didn’t #
• so the "Windows Update" on my phone obviously did no good #
• @brianaker: yes. #
• i wonder why MMS doesn’t work on my phone.. GAH #
• why do people send email, then immediatley have vacation responses? #
• actually… why do people have vacation responses… #
• Tool, is awesome. #
• @jenn: what you having trouble with? #
• it only takes 36 pages or so of employment agreement text to be employed by sun #
• we should really switch to an ubuntu-style release model for MySQL #
• @FallenPegasus the git-svn and bzr-svn converters don’t work too bad either. #
• i don’t know why… but i feel like filter coffee #
• (which is a problem… ’cause i don’t have one of those doodads… and I’ve possibly bought enough kitchen appliances for this week) #
• @katekrab: I have a theory it’s because it’s easy to bulk-make. #
• @kattekrab: of course, most filter coffee is complete crap. #
• @FallenPegasus: i’m not sure…there may be… there’s a wiki page on the bzr site #

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• i have the urge to watch the south park movie (could be because listening to the soundtrack) #

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How do I make an existing project (let’s say, MySQL) switch from generating a config.h that has #undef HAVE_FOO to one that generates #define HAVE_FOO 0 instead?

Why? Well, here’s why:

Testing for features should be done by including “config.h” and using #if HAVE_<feature>. Use of #if (rather than #ifdef) allows the gcc -Wundef flag to warn users about features which aren’t defined 1 or 0 in config.h.

I can’t remember the last time i used default mkfs or mount options… oh yeah, that’s right - by accident.

Anyway… I did a little experiment today.

The filesystem is my laptop /home - XFS, 100GB, 95% used (so 5-6GB free), rather aged. This is where a lot of my MySQL development is done. Mkfs options: 128MB log, version2 log. Mount options: logbufs=8, logbsize=256k. All of this geared towards increasing metadata performance.

Why metadata performance? well… source code trees are a lot of metadata :)

So, let’s try some things: cloning a repository and then removing the repository.

Two variables are being tested: mounting the file system with nobarrier (or barrier, the default). Write barriers tell the disk to ensure write order to the platter when write cache is in use. Also testing disabling (or enabling, the default) the disk write cache.

NOTE: the last option which has the write cache enabled and write barriers disabled is NOT SAFE. If your machine crashes, you loose data, and potentially your file system ends up corrupted.

So I’m now disabling my disk write cache and mounting with nobarrier.

If you use real disk arrays - e.g. battery backed write cache RAID boxes, the story is likely very different!

• Currently in the melbourne sun office #

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LugRadio is possibly the best Linux/Free Software related podcast out there - and it has been for a very long time. LugRadio Live is a live event where lots of people gather together to love freedom.

This year, there’s a LugRadio Live USA - and it’s in San Francisco. So, are you going to be (or are able to be) around SF the weekend before the MySQL UC? If, there is no excuse not to drop in on LugRadio Live USA - it should be awesome! (oh, and it doesn’t cost much… like $10 or something)

• why is epiphany using 50% CPU? #
• lunchtime! #
• pie in the oven #
• different crust this time… likely healthier #
• @bytebot: have a good flight! #

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• @bytebot: we should go for a bite before you go #
• @bytebot: sounds good #
• @bytebot: hrrm… dunno… what you feel like eating? #
• @pjf: such things do not exist #
• @pjf: it’s because there’s a duopoly on direct flights #
• @bytebot: hrrm… well.. i’m going to go for lunch now… back soon #
• @pjf: and i arrived 5 minutes in …. usually with films you can pick up what’s going on after a bit… not this one. it got to the end, … #
• @pjf: i do hope the game was better… although being stabbed in the arm is better. #
• @pjf: still sounds better than the film #
• the "welcome to sun" package i just got in mail: about an inch thick, with a "too heavy" label on the envelope #
• "This agreement shall be goverened by the laws of Austria". #
• i find the whole idea of private health insurance offensive. #
• @pjf: i was casually wondering wtf there #
• evolution crashed *AGAIN* #
• i am *really* please with the performance of the Maria engine. #
• hrrm… rdiff-backup is rather slow… nearly 5 hours for last night backup #

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Watched In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007) the other day. Fucking awful. Only watch while unconcious and wanting to have the remaining life sucked out of you. We took to making up dialog for the people on the screen - and ours was better.

• finally hooked up some extra disks to the mythtv box: 1,146,934MB total now :) #

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• mmmm…. coffee #

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• gah… OpenOffice.org Impress still has that bug where the curved lines randomly change on save/load #
• okay… even unconnected curved lines change after saving, close, open. ARRGH #
• good friday is annoying - everything closed #

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• OpenOffice Impress is irritating me again… slow, CPU greedy and generally annoying #
• several minutes to save a document is not fun #

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• this is much better March weather #
• /me stabs Visual Studio for locking up the UI for asking it the simple question of "cancel build" #
• VisualStudio 2005 doesn’t know how to save files safely. #
• led zeppelin is awesome. that is all. #
• mmm… Tool #
• i hate melbourne trains (connex). yet another delayed train #
• note: get new im client for phone, it puts banners on messages #
• @bytebot: drinking and driving, although safer than the avg cab driver is still illegal #
• train! #
• with flickering light :( ARRGGHH.. #
• now we’ve stopped inexplicably between richmond and flinders. feel the love #
• tram didn’t show up either. melbourne public transport realy does suck #

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• gaaaah… OpenOffice Impress is annoying #

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Yep, a new MythTV version is now about 10 days old. I’ve been running a “recent” SVN build for a while now, and there’s a lot of pretty goodness there - and been fairly stable. Nothing radically different than before, just natural evolution for the better.

• @bytebot: it’s 37 #
• hrrm… need coffee i think #
• Evolution crashed again #
• ctrl-e… then esc esc (not what i wanted to do). *boom* #
• right while writing mail :/ #
• I think I want a Veronica Mars-a-thon #
• okay… from the start… let’s see how long it takes me to watch all 3 series again #

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Found this today: Windows Core Networking : WSAPoll, A new Winsock API to simplify porting poll() applications to Winsock.

Which means we should be able to squeeze some peformance out of Vista. Although, since poll() we’ve gone and moved on to much better things in the free world.

As part of porting MySQL Cluster to Microsoft Windows platforms, I’m going and redoing a lot of the portable sockets code in MySQL. My goal is to have enforcing of proper use of the portable functions be done by the compiler instead of the programmer - leading to less portability bugs.

Let’s face it: friends don’t let friends have to run Windows to not break the Windows port.

Good news is that so far I’ve found several bugs that could have presented them in real nasty ways at run time but have instead showed up as build errors - brilliant!

• @bytebot: well, the F1 is on this weekend :) #
• bread in the oven, yay :0 #
• mmm coffee #
• what do baby snakes eat? #

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• @brianaker: none of these newfangled things have an inch over Word 5.1a Mac #
• tired #

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