db4free.net blog has moved and what's new

It was about time to switch to something new.

I finally have my new blog launched at www.mpopp.net which is something that I had planned for quite a while. This new blog is a replacement for my old blog at db4free.blogspot.com where people will find news and posts about db4free.net and MySQL. But since db4free.blogspot.com used to be specific to db4free.net and MySQL (implied by its name), it was not a good place to blog about various different topics as well, which I found increasingly limiting. So I decided for a new blog, run by Wordpress, which will allow me to categorize my blog posts to target people who are interested in specific topics.

Some of them will be:

• db4free.net of course as well as


• MySQL of course.

... so far, not much new and most posts which go into one category will go into the other as well.

Further categories that I'm thinking of are:

• Astronomy (this is probably the topic that I missed a place to blog about the most),


• Web and Web Development related things,


• Guitar (which I'm playing) or


• Music in general,


• Politics (a PITA most of the time) and maybe even


• 日本語 - ehm, that's Japanese which I'm trying to learn and ...


• who knows what else, this list is expandable without limits.

If you had my old blog bookmarked or had linked to it on your blog or site, please add or update to bookmark or link to my new blog. And if you haven't not done so far, why not do so now?

Welcome to my new home!

db4free.net outage

Here is in brief what's going on.

Last Friday (CET), big hardware troubles started on the server which db4free.net runs on. The server was unavailable and I didn't manage to start it up again by myself. I files a support ticked to my server provider, and by Saturday afternoon, the server was accessible again. Everything seemed to look fine, but Sunday, shortly after midnight, the same troubles started again.

My server provider gave me a new server, and thankfully, managed to get the old server to start up again. I backed up the user databases and copied them to the new server, so no - or at least almost no - data should be lost.

It will take me some time to migrate the entire service to the new server, so please be patient. I also want to use this "opportunity" to start offering MySQL 5.5, so my plan is to make the old server available on a different port, and start the entire service over on a fresh and clean MySQL 5.5 instance. This will mean that users will have access to their data (probably for the next 2 months or so, until I shut down the MySQL 5.1 server), but in order to use the new server, everybody will have to register a new account again. These are my current plans, and I hope to have the new db4free.net fully up again by upcoming Friday (March 26).

Please apologize the inconveniences. However, it's again a good opportunity to remember that db4free.net is a testing service with no warranties and that users should keep backups of all data they really need!

What is happening with db4free.net and where is the Port 3307 server?

db4free.net users may have noticed that they can't access the server on port 3307 anymore.

It isn't gone (yet), but soon will be. I plan to reduce the db4free.net service to a single server again which means that the 2nd server will be removed. So in order to make people notice that a change is going to happen, I moved the server to port 3308.

If you have data on this server which you want to keep, please move it to the port 3306 server until February 28, 2010. After then, the server will no longer be accessible.

Another change which is going to happen is that I will delete db4free.net accounts again which are not being used anymore. If you have - or will until end of February - accessed your port 3306 any time in the year 2010, you will be safe (unless you use up excessively much disk space or do other naughty things, so your account gets deleted for that reason). The purpose is to create more resources for those people who really use this service.

But there is more going on. Just a few minutes ago, db4free.net received its first major code update in a long time. I have to ashamedly admit, the code is a mess and I have made many bad (some very bad) design decisions when I first created the application (almost 5 years ago). The first set of changes (which went online right now) became necessary because parts of the code and libraries that I used would not work with PHP 5.3 anymore. So now, db4free.net is ready for PHP 5.3, but a lot more is required to be done. So I'm going to apply more code updates over time, some of which you may notice, but most (especially in the beginning) are probably under the hood so that they are not very noticeable. What should happen though is that at some points you should notice that the website will (hopefully) load significantly faster.

Another update which I plan in the first half of 2010 is to update the MySQL server to MySQL 5.5, the new development release. I am thinking about giving db4free.net a totally new start. So what is now the port 3306 server may also be moved to a different port, and a totally fresh MySQL 5.5 server will be available for your use. You may even have to register again, but (as with the port 3307/3308 server now) your data will be available for long enough to allow you to migrate it to the new server. Please remember that db4free.net is a testing environment and not a hosting service for productive data. Changes like these can happen, and will happen.

Also outages (most probably only for short periods of time) may become more frequent during the upcoming months, while I apply the updates. But when they are finished, db4free.net will be a much better service again, which may even allow feature additions. So rather than getting frustrated, please consider these outages as necessary to get improvements in the future. They will pay off in the end.

Until then, please apologize for the inconveniences they may cause.

Thanks,
Markus

PS: and please remember: backups, backups, backups for data which you need!