...just might be The Stig ;-)

Today me and Michelle went to see The Sound of Music, really good highly recommend it. You may cringe as soon as you hear 'that' song but get past it, really good!

(Summer Strallen pictured with my fiancee)

Thanks to PickledOnion and SliceHost for posting this on their tutorials site, here's a quick example to improve your MySQL speed.

Tuning your Install

Remote onto your box via SSH, and...

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Go down till you see a section for the [mysqld] settings, then add...

default-storage-engine = MyISAM

This will set MySQL to use the MyISAM storage engine (lighter than InnoDB) for all newly created databases.

Now look for anything called...

#skip-innodb

delete the # to make skip loading the InnoDB engine, if you're not using it, changing it to...

skip-innodb

NOTE: Ubuntu Gutsy MySQL 5 uses InnoDB by default (i've found) , so if you haven't set the type and your on Ubuntu Gutsy with a database already on there; then chances are it's under InnoDB. so skip this one for now (see bottom).

Now navigate to the Fine Tuning section and change the values to:

# * Fine Tuning
#
key_buffer = 16K
max_allowed_packet = 1M
thread_stack = 64K
thread_cache_size = 4

Add these also,

sort_buffer = 64K
net_buffer_length = 2K

Save the file and restart MySQL with...

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Job done, you can run:

top

To see your memory usage (exit with 'q')

Convert Tables to MyISAM

Log into your MySQL server via...

mysql -u root

Now type,

show databases;

Choose your database,

use my_db;

Now see what tables are around,

show tables;

Now you can run a command to convert your tables over to the MyISAM format,

ALTER TABLE my_table ENGINE = MyISAM;

More here...

• convert Typo to MyISAM

Restart MySQL

Easily done via,

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

And If All Fails

Now for me those settings weren't completely ideal for Typo5's performance so I switched them back to the default settings, with my other apps they were fine (think they're good for memory-starved situations).

The default settings are...

# * Fine Tuning
#
key_buffer      = 16M
max_allowed_packet  = 16M
thread_stack        = 128K
thread_cache_size   = 8
#sort_buffer = 64K
#net_buffer_length = 2K
#max_connections        = 100
#table_cache            = 64
#thread_concurrency     = 10
#
# * Query Cache Configuration
#
query_cache_limit       = 1M
query_cache_size        = 16M

Here’s some useful commands to keep things running in check on your linux box; apt-get (ubuntu), aptitude (debian).

• apt-get update …update software repository db
• apt-get upgrade …install software updates
• apt-get clean …clear old software caches

Use aptitude clean on a debian linux system and the other appropriate commands to do the same.

Also i’d suggest buying the book ‘Linux Phrasebook’ from Amazon, very useful.