[Plug] Mysql installation

[Craig Ringer]

On Sun, 2004-07-18 at 17:07, Dave Dartnall wrote:

> Then I tried  'mysqld_safe --user=mysql &' as set out in the file 
> 'mysqlinstall' with the response to the effect that it couldn't find the 
> socket....

Possibly the distributor placed the socket file in a different place
(this is quite common).

> Then I found a detailed series of explanation of various causes of access 
> denied errors in 'MySQL-4.0.18 /manual.html#Common_errors' section 5.4.9 
> which seemed to be putting me on the right track - but I got pissed off after 
> spending the best part of a day and a half on it

Oh, yeah. I'm far too familar with that. There are lot of things I like
about OSS, but that's not one of them.

On the other hand, I've also wasted days trying to get things working on
systems I've paid a lot of money for, usually with tech support who're
either not helpful or even more expensive than the software. So I should
stop complaining ;-)

> got rid of mysql as far as 
> possible and tried postgresql - with success!

The PostgreSQL database access controls seem considerably less flexible
than MySQL's, but so _very_ much easier to use. Anyway, PostgreSQL
provides excellent in-database access control, which helps offset that.

You're better off with PostgreSQL anyway, IMHO. It'll save you the pain
of a DB server migration once you outgrow MySQL and want *ahem* "fancy"
features like stored procedures (esp in external languages), triggers,
constraints, referential integrity enforcement, and transactions (yes,
in fairness 4.0 does have transactions on InnoDB tables).

> So I apologise for wasting your time - please accept my thanks for trying to 
> help.

Heh. One tip for future reference is that distributors often change
things about the software they're distributing, but rarely bother to
update the documentation that shipped with the software - especially
install documentation. This is irritating, but understandable given how
much they need to do to get a release out the door.

Very common changes include defaults, file locations, authentication
methods (ie use PAM instead of old-style UNIX auth functions), socket
locations, disabling network access, and changing the way services are
started. They generally do this to make all the software more consistent
and to make it work as an admin expects... but at the cost of causing it
to differ somewhat from the install docs.

I'm coming rather late to this thread, so if I'm completely misreading
things, I'm sorry.

--
Craig Ringer