Databases

Introduction

Fysh.Org has a number of database implementations available to any user upon request. These range from the simple use of file-based databases such as Berkeley DB through to full RDBMS like MySQL and PostgreSQL. In the case of file-based databases the most you may have to ask us to do is install a development package for it so that you can link your own code against the libraries.

In the case of MySQL and PostgreSQL we run whatever version is current in Debian 'stable'. Any user of pond.fysh.org can request any number of databases be set up for them. Simply ask us to create the database and grant access. Please specify preferred database name, username and password, and whether you'll need access from anything but localhost. By default access is only from localhost and if you need it from other hosts we'll need to know their IP(s). If you intend to make use of the database from web pages then they'll need to use the hostname 'db.fysh.org' to access the database. Using this hostname, rather than the IP it resolves to, is preferred because it means you don't need to make any changes if we change IP for any reason.

If you find that we don't have support for the RDBMS you requested in the development language you prefer to use just ask and we'll do our best to install it. If it's available as a Debian 'stable' package there will be no problem, however if it isn't then we can't guarantee being able to fulfil the request.

Database Backups

Note users of any RDBMS database on pond.fysh.org should implement a backup schedule themselves. For MySQL a command like the following works well:

mysqldump -u <database user> --lock-tables --opt --quick <database name> > <backup file name>

For PostgreSQL check the documentation for the pg_dump command. Please do ensure you keep backups around only for as long as necessary so as to not over-use disk space.

Once a user has such backups implemented the files produced by such will of course form part of our normal backup sets.

Web Admin

We do have PhpMyAdmin installed for administrating MySQL databases and it is preferred users make use of this central installation rather than installing their own copy. This way we can be sure that the copy used is up to date with respect to security patches.