markbetz.net

In the process of setting up MySQL 5.0.32 on Debian Etch recently I ran into a frustrating problem. The server was installed correctly. The users were set up correctly, with the right established roles. I could connect to the server fine from the machine it was installed on, but not from any other machine on the LAN. I had run through the configuration in the MySQL Administrator three or four times to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, principally to keep squinting at the “Disable networking” checkbox to make sure it was clear. It was clear. It WAS CLEAR, dammit. But no matter: I could connect from the local system, but not from the Windows box sitting next to it. Trying from the MySQL Administrator program yielded the following…

From the command line it looked like this…

ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘192.168.0.105′ (111)

I Googled every combination of terms I could think of. At one point I ran across a discussion where someone seemed to be having the same problem, and about halfway down the page someone else suggested editing something in a conf file. Figuring I didn’t want to mess with conf files just yet (there MUST be a checkbox I missed SOMEWHERE) I kept butting my head against the problem. Finally, in a flash of what you wouldn’t call inspiration, given that I had been making no progress for thirty minutes, I tried the actual IP address rather than ‘localhost’ from the local host. No go. Aha… so it certainly acts like networking is disabled.

I went back and reread that discussion, and that’s when I learned about the variable bind-address in /etc/mysql/my.cnf. Here’s what it looks like after a default install…

# Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on
# localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure.
bind-address = 127.0.0.1

What it means is that in the default install mysqld will only bind to localhost (127.0.0.1). That interface has no communication with the outside world. The solution is just to comment it out, and suddenly everything works. You would think that the default install would also show “Disable networking” as “true” in the administrator when networking is… uhm… disabled, but I’m probably just not getting it yet.

It’s not in my nature to throw away work I have done. I still have archives of project folders that were set up in 1990 on my hard disk. You never know when you’re going to need a quick answer to a Borland C++ 4.0 question. My physical workshop looks a lot like my virtual one: dusty shelves; boxes piled high with old components. You never know when you’re going to need a modem, or a PS/2 to USB converter.

I mention these things to illustrate that today represents a significant departure for me. For a few years I maintained a blog at modalogica.com, and a personal page at markbetz.net. The framework for these pages was derived from PopForums, a forum platform for ASP.Net 1.1. I made a lot of modifications to it over time, including the blog pages, file libraries, and some other things. It worked very well, but as my kids grew along with my responsibilities I realized that I wanted to program and write, not spend my scarce programming time implementing features to support writing.

Another change for me has been my increasing use of Linux over the last year. I was never a Windows zealot, and I am not now an anti-Microsoft crusader of some kind. It’s just that I have had to use it for work, and it has turned out to be easier for some things that I have done here at home, too. The situation has evolved to the point where I have a sort of geeky crush on Debian, but I wouldn’t prescribe it to my mother for her daily use. When it works, it works really well. When it fails, it fails in spectacularly arcane ways that take a specialist spelunker of old forum posts to figure out.

These trends all lead to to today’s re-launch of my blog site running in Wordpress on Linux. I’m pretty impressed with the platform so far, but will have much more to say on that later. Getting the content that I wanted out of the old blog has been painful, enough so that I have not brought everything, nor, for reasons of focus, will I. I intend this blog to be much more narrowly focused on programming, with a side dish of history, and occasional seasoning of games and literature.

I’ve spent about a week so far getting everything running the way I want it to, or pretty close. The theme is Paalam with a custom header image and some other small tweaks. In addition I am using NextGEN Gallery, and a few other widgets and plugins. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to add a lot of pictures and some of the files that I used to have linked on the old site. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy what you find here. Drop me a comment if you have any suggestions.