MySQL 5.1.34 Upgrades on CentOS 4 – ho hum
So, I needed to upgrade MySQL on our development boxes today and I was met by a little surprise from the RPM program…
Basically it won’t do an upgrade as the vendor has changed from being MySQL AB to Sun Microsystems, and as a result I have to do a complete uninstall and re-install manually…
Ho hum, I know it’s a small issue and for the best, but it’s still a pain in the ass when something silly such as vendor name change wastes time in what would otherwise be a quick and simple upgrade.
So anyway as I’m going through it the following might be useful to you if you have to do the same any time soon.
First download all the current MySQL packages you need:
$hell> mkdir mysql-5.1.34
$hell> cd mysql-5.1.34
Then stop all running MySQL Process:
$hell> /etc/init.d/myst stop
Then find all the MySQL packages you need to remove by running:
$hell> rpm -qa | grep -i '^mysql-'
Then uninstall each e.g.:
$hell> rpm -e MySQL-client-community-5.1.29-0.rhel4
Then re-install all the new ones you just downloaded e.g.:
$hell> rpm -i MySQL-shared-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm
Then run the MySQL upgrade program to do the final checks and upgrade the MySQL system database if necessary:
$hell> /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade -uroot -p
And that’s it, all should work nicely again 
Remember though, you shouldn’t upgrade between major versions that aren’t in sequence. i.e. Don’t upgrade from MySQL from 4.0 to 5.1 as the additions to the software made in 4.1, 5.0, etc. can be lost by skipping these intermediate upgrades.
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So does CentOS not have a package manager, like Yum or Apt? I thought manually installing rpm’s was for hacks when package managers screwed things over.
Maybe we should start using Gentoo and build everything from source heh
Well as CentOS is RHEL its package manager is RPM
There are other reasons though why we don’t use inbuilt software management tools to mange some of our software which I’ll not go into here.
RPM’s aren’t just for hacks though, in particular (as this is the example we’re talking about) the MySQL RPM’s are generally better builds than you’d get from doing it from source yourself.
Does RHEL not use Yum? I know Fedora does, so normally (ignoring our internal systems) I’d expect a package manager to be used, right?
The only time I’ve used RPMs is when a package isn’t available from yum repos… and surely building from source (not just MySQL, but any software) is better, as it’s tailored specifically for the system you’re using?? I’ve always found that to be the case anyway…
Edit: When I say “better” I mean more tailored really. Pre-built rpms I expect contain more bloat, due to being pre-configured for all possible cases. If you build from source, that eliminates bloat by not compliling stuff that isn’t compatible with your system… I’m pretty sure that’s why Gentoo exists – to remove bloat that using package managers causes like Yum and Apt.
In certain cases what you point out about tailoring is true BUT use of commercial compilers actually offer benefits aside from potential bloat.
Again taking MySQL as a case in point, this is their take on the matter (though it doesn’t say much):
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/linux-rpm.html
What you’ll see is that really the requirements for it to run are minimal outside of it’s own libraries and as such there is no real bloat caused from the precompilation.
Actually what you find is that because compilers such as those outlined here: http://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers/ are used, the generated binaries are actually of a better ‘quality’ for a particular CPU architecture than you’d be able to produce using most of the open source alternatives.
Really, if the precompiled code from a major distributor exists for your platform you should use as it, as it’s likely to have been compiled with a pro compiler and therefore run better on your system.
If no specific version for your system exists you may experience some bloat in some cases and might benefit from compiling the software yourself, but this is rare for most mainstream open-source packages that also have commercial variants or ties.