Heads up: Renewing MariaDB Downloads

Time to renew downloads.mariadb.org! We are embarking on a long project. A large part of our user base mainly interacts with us through downloading new versions. Renewing MariaDB Downloads is the biggest-impact project of all of 2020, for that part of our user base.

Projects like this often get launched when external and internal impulses coincide. Our users have asked for a more consistent, simpler user experience. Advanced users would like a programmatic interface (a.k.a. REST API) for part of the functionality. And the current codebase needs refactoring attention, as it has served past its best-before date.

Redirecting Downloaders to Knowledge Base

At the end of the download process for MariaDB Server from downloads.mariadb.org, downloaders will from now on be redirected to a MariaDB Knowledge Base page with further information related to how to work with the MariaDB Server release just downloaded.

This is meant to be helpful for the downloader, both when getting started with MariaDB in general, and with that specific release in particular.

The decision to redirect downloaders to a site run by the MariaDB Corporation needs special care. The MariaDB Foundation board voted on the issue, with the board members who work for the MariaDB Corporation abstaining from the vote. …

Monty Program & SkySQL: a statement on the serious security vulnerability that was found in MariaDB and MySQL

Over the past few days extensive conversations around a new security vulnerability in MariaDB and MySQL have taken place.

It all started as a chain reaction when Monty Program publicly disclosed information about the flaw they had found and about how to make sure your MariaDB and MySQL installations can be fixed. The initial information got assigned the security vulnerabitlity identifier CVE-2012-2122 and the contents can be seen e.g. here http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2012/q2/493.

The bug was found two months ago on April 4th.

Before disclosing the information publicly, given the seriousness of this bug and considering the millions of MySQL and MariaDB installations deployed worldwide, Monty Program informed the biggest distributors of MySQL and MariaDB as a precaution. …

How the MariaDB download system works

During my years at MySQL AB I had the unfortunate task of manually maintaining the download page for enterprise customers. This involved a ton of boring, error prone work and almost always led to some sort of error every release. Some of our downloads were eventually replaced with an automated system written by the web team but the memory of all that time wasted still hurts me. So when I joined Monty Program and saw our downloads were manually maintained in mediawiki I knew something had to change.

Most of the websites for Monty Program and the MariaDB project are written with Django so this is where I started. …

Setting up MariaDB repositories for Debian/Ubuntu

If you run Debian or Ubuntu, and want a way to auto-generate a sources.list entry, then you should definitely look at: Setting up Repositories for Ubuntu/Debian. Its very simple: choose a distribution, then a release, then choose what version of MariaDB you would like to track and a mirror of your choice, and voila! it generates the sources.list for you.