The easiest way to install MariaDB is to add one of the repositories, I’ve used OurDelta:

Then install MariaDB:

This should install MariaDB without any problems, it should also replace MySQL if you already installed it:

If you are upgrading from MySQL, you will probably be prompted to overwrite the my.cnf and for a new root password. I generally choose Y to overwrite and enter my existing root password to avoid issue.

You can also follow my previous post to upgrade the client library used by PHP, rather than installing the MySQL dev package, the Maria equivalent should be used:

Install the source package:

or

Install the MySQL client dev package:

Install autoconf:

From this point onwards I ran as root as saves time having to sudo everything, I have also created symlinks for the binaries in /usr/local/zend/bin to /usr/local (php, phpize, php-config, pear, pecl etc)

Change to the extensions directory of the source you just installed:

There are 3 extensions that need to be recompiled mysql, mysqli and pdo_mysql, the following procedure is the same for all 3:

Finally restart Zend Server and all the MySQL extensions will be using the latest libraries.

Along with the rather unsatisfactory resolution:

The reason for this error is that the Zend MySQL packages are built against MySQL 5.0 (despite the fact 5.1 has been GA for over a year now).

Ubuntu have removed MySQL 5.0 in Lucid, but the package from Karmic is usable and available here: http://ns2.canonical.com/pt/karmic/libmysqlclient15off

Simply install this and Zend Server will install nicely.

The last upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic was a rather traumatic process, but thankfully this time round all went smoothly. Not really any overly noticeable changes this time round other than a few more things have moved into upstart (MySQL for example) and when I boot via KVM the new Plymouth boot screen is present, although not sure why this is even included in a server release.

It’s about as updated a LAMP setup as is possible including Apache 2.2.14, MySQL 5.1.41 and especially pleased they put in PHP 5.3.2 after the code freeze. On this server I’m actually running Zend Server CE (which already had PHP 5.3.2) as Zend are quicker to push out the updates, but on others I will stick with the default Ubuntu release.

What else can be said about a server OS? Well, it just works

It appears from a package search that 2 days ago PHP 5.3.1 packages were added to Lucid. It’s quite a big step, and will be interesting if they also include a 5.2.x release along side it as so many applications are not ready for 5.3 yet.

More information can be found on Launchpad:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/...

It turns out that for some reason Apt doesn’t properly upgrade the Zend Server package itself, to fix this I ran the repository installer script again on all effected machines.

After this everything worked as it should!

The new page can be found here.

I have performed an apt-get update/upgrade on my servers which worked without issue, however the GUI seams to be a bit buggy following the upgrade. Firstly it looks like some of the styles and images are wrong/missing and secondly the restart button doesn’t seam to work.

For full downloads visit the Zend website:

http://www.zend.com/en/products/server/

I noticed I have been getting a lot of hits on my previous post, mainly from others looking for ways to install PHP 5.3 on Ubuntu so I thought it was about time for a follow up.

I’m using PHP 5.3.0 as this is the latest release for Zend Server, the only 5.3.1 release I’m aware of is the DotDeb packages. I try to stay clear of DotDeb, mainly because the packages are built for Debian which often causes issues and conflicts. (Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable so can potentially have a completely different version of every package than the Debian stable branch, as well as changes/tweaks/updates from the Ubuntu team.)

Here are the tweaks I have made to enable PHP to run smoothly, it’s generally quicker to use the Zend web GUI, but these changes can also be done by editing php.ini or adding/removing symbolic links to extensions:

Config changes:

• Set the default timezone. This seams to be a requirement for PHP 5.3 to have the local timezone set, otherwise we are spammed with about 20 deprecated message when PHP starts. There are a number of ways to do this, the easiest of which is to set the date.timezone config parameter.
  
• Set the full path to sendmail. The PHP mail() command will fail unless this is done, this is due to a bug in either PHP or Zend Server (which of them, I’m not sure). Set the sendmail_path config parameter to do this.
  
• [Optional] By default the maximum file size you can upload is around 8Mb, if you are likely be using larger files than this, video uploads for example, this change becomes essential. There are 2 options for this setting, both post_max_size and upload_max_filesize should be set.
  
• [Optional] By default session timeouts are very short (only about 20 mins), I find it’s usualy a good idea to make it longer.
  

Extension changes:

• By default Zend Server comes with tonnes of database extensions, MySQL, PostGreSQL, MSSQL, ODBC, OCI8, SQLite plus PDO versions of most of the above. There is no point having extensions in there we don’t need, pick the extension(s) you need and disable the rest.
• Disable pcntl on web server environments, as it is apparently not supposed to be used in this way.

This is really all is need to get things up and running, shouldn’t take more than a minute to do.

The 2.5Tb storage partition on my Xen box decided to pack up recently (or at least Xen decided it no longer wanted to read the partition) so after backing up the data decided to run some tests.

Drives: 4x Western Digital RE 1Tb

RAID 5:

This was the original configuration of the array, despite having fast drives in my desktop and 1Gbit network the read speeds were slower than expected (around 35Mb/sec).

The hdparm results were inconsistent:

Timing cached reads: 10118 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5064.59 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 224 MB in 3.02 seconds = 74.24 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10020 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5016.71 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 148 MB in 3.03 seconds = 48.83 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10126 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5068.86 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 200 MB in 3.03 seconds = 65.94 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10086 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5049.90 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 234 MB in 3.02 seconds = 77.55 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10042 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5027.45 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 210 MB in 3.01 seconds = 69.80 MB/sec

Average over the 5 tests: 67.27 Mb/sec

RAID 10:

As an alternative I switched the array to RAID 10, the downside of this configuration is that there is 1Tb less space than RAID 5.

Timing cached reads: 10170 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5091.34 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 320 MB in 3.01 seconds = 106.46 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10094 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5052.71 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 316 MB in 3.02 seconds = 104.59 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10072 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5041.96 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 314 MB in 3.01 seconds = 104.29 MB/sec

RAID 10 results are much more consistent.
Average over the 3 tests: 105.11 Mb/sec

RAID 6:

Another configuration offering 2 disk redundancy.

Timing cached reads: 10172 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5091.87 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 202 MB in 3.01 seconds = 67.06 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10052 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5031.76 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 202 MB in 3.01 seconds = 67.18 MB/sec

Timing cached reads: 10102 MB in 2.00 seconds = 5057.17 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 206 MB in 3.00 seconds = 68.59 MB/sec

RAID 6 results are also fairly consistent.
Average over the 3 tests: 67.61 Mb/sec

It seams that with this configuration that RAID 5/6 perform at roughly the same speed, however RAID 10 seams to win out on the speed test with over 50% improvement over RAID 5/6.