Slashdot Mirror
Revisiting FreeBSD vs. Linux for MySQL
Dan writes "Jeremy Zawodny, who looks after all of Yahoo!'s MySQL servers says MySQL now runs very well on FreeBSD. He is no longer steering people toward Linux. There are two important things you should do to make the FreeBSD/MySQL combo work well: (1) build MySQL with LinuxThreads rather than FreeBSD's native threads, and (2) use MySQL 4.x or newer."
Personally, I like using "cd /usr/ports/databases/postgresql7 && make install" rather than using a binary package, as that way you have the source code on your system, and you can use all of the wonderful things in the contrib directory.
tsearch is a very nice GIST indexed full text search that does word stemming.
reindexdb is a handy way to regenerate all of the indices in a database without interrupting anything.
earthdistance is far faster than writing the same thing as a SQL function.
ltree is wonderful when you have to deal with a hierarchy.
And those are just the ones I remember offhand...
Given that FreeBSD -current 1:1 threads are not 100% yet, the native FreeBSD threads will not grant the optimal performance compared to the linux threads. Yahoo probably uses a RELEASE version, or a -STABLE version of FreeBSD on their production systems, so the KSE probably isn't an option anyways. Once KSE is finished, I'm sure we will reviste the "FreeBSD V. Linux" threads war again. No granted I'm a bit biased toward FreeBSD, but I think that since the same folks control the LIBC taht are also creating the KSE (kernel scheduled Entities, aka kernel aware threads) that FreeBSD will have a bit tighter integration when all things are said and done.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Up to a point this is true. However MySQL does win on one point, namely that if you do not need most of the features of a real RDBMS then it is faster than Postgres. If you are just using it as an information store for a web site, for example, then it may be a better choice. As always, right tool for the right job.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And PostgreSQL is easier to work with. And setting up PgSQL is a breeze. And..
I could go on all day about why I don't use MySQL. Just because a great percentage of a particlar market is using something, it doesn't mean they are right. (viz: Microsoft products, on the whole, are a pain in the ass.)
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Please note that on 3.3-STABLE and -current, MySQL is also finally extremely stable on OpenBSD, with native threads.
A lot of threading-related work has been made during the 3.3 development cycle and there are no more unexpected crashes with this sort of apps. For instance the new threading code solved all issues I had with the Oops proxy, that is now very stable on production servers.
{{.sig}}