Re: [Help-gnunet] mysql database setup

[David Kuehling]

>>>>> "Christian" == Christian Grothoff <address@hidden> writes:

> Interesting, I didn't think there was much to the mysql-setup given
> that there is mysql_set_permission.  

Well, as far as the current GNUnet documentation is concerned, setting
up the database is quite a hurdle:

  http://www.gnunet.org/user_afs.php3?xlang=English#mysql

mysql_setpermission is nowhere mentioned there.  Also, for people like
me, who never ever installed or worked or read about mysql (or databases
in general), all this is non-trivial.  Especially if your database
breaks and you want to recreate it.  Nobody would assume, that the
delete command is named "DROP".  And googling for that took me lots of
time (googling for "mysql commands" turns up this:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/mysql-commands.html which is
completely useless, since database creatiion is in section "mysql data
manipulation statemens" who would guess that?).

> I wonder why you hardwired things like "~/.my.cnf" (where the path
> maybe different and can be specified in gnunetd.conf) 

Oh really, I just overlooked.  I also guess that the gnunet user and the
username used for the database need not be the same?
 
> and then ask the user to manually delete certain files -- given
> gnunetd.conf and some grep/awk-ing (or using gnunet-update's "-g"
> option) you should be able to determine all of those paths and
> automate these bits as well. 

Well, I actually wanted to auto-delete those things, but I did not want
to parse the config file from a shell script.  Asking the user to
manually delete was more like a todo entry so people like you can
comment on how that could be done right :)

> Especially for a Debian package, that level of automation might be
> nice.

Yes, that somehow was the point of my proof-of-concept script.

> I'll be happy to add the script to contrib/; I just wonder if it would
> just contribute to the wasteland of undocumented and largely unknown
> scripts there.  

Absolutely positive.  This was more meant for discussion on the mailing
list.

> Maybe we should make this one part of gnunet-update for the
> 0.8.0-release? (for systems running gnunet-update when migrating from
> 0.7.3?).

> Comments? Further suggestions?

Making this part of gnunet-update would not allow deletion of databases?
If this were part of a Debian package, than complete removal of the
package should also remove the database.  

Given your comments, I would propose the following:

Add a new binary program to GNUnet: 'gnunet-mysql' (or similar name),
that does what the shell script does, but uses GNUnet's config file
parser to read and update the config file and create or delete
databases, plus updating/invalidating all the meta-data files
(bloomfilter etc.).  I would like GNUnet to use a my.cnf file in the
GNUNETD_HOME directory (if present).  Such a private file could also be
written by gnunet-update/gnunet-mysql without worrying about
side-effects.

I would even volunteer for implementation, but don't expect anything
before may :) Well, or if somebody more qualified with mysql did the
setup program, then I'd be happy to test and contribute Debian
(un)installation scripts that (non)interactively configure the database.

With my current experience sqlite performance is very weak compared to
mysql (ie HDD LED constantly glowing).  Any chance that mysql can be made
the default for Debian/Ubuntu packages?

cheers,

David
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