10.7 preview feature: Password Reuse Check plugin

By default, MariaDB does not check if a user reuses a password. Some security policies require users to choose a new password each time, and the Password Reuse Check plugin, available in a MariaDB 10.7.0 preview, enables this functionality.

Old passwords are stored in the mysql.password_reuse_check_history table, and the period they are retained for is determined by the password-reuse-check-interval system variable, which specifies a number of days. By default this is zero, meaning unlimited retention.

The password can be used in conjunction with other password validation plugins, such as the Simple Password Check plugin or the CrackLib Password Check plugin.

MariaDB 10.1.2 : INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables for Galera membership & status

MariaDB Galera server logs all the cluster related information like node status, cluster status, membership, etc. in the error log. MariaDB 10.1.2 introduces a new INFORMATION SCHEMA plugin WSREP_INFO that enables querying these information via INFORMATION SCHEMA tables. The WSREP_INFO plugin adds two new tables to the Information Schema, WSREP_MEMBERSHIP and WSREP_STATUS. The plugin is not enabled by default, so in order to use it, it needs to be installed first :

MariaDB [test]> INSTALL SONAME ‘wsrep_status’;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.04 sec)

MariaDB [test]> SHOW PLUGINS;
+—————————–+———-+——————–+—————–+———+
| Name | Status | Type | Library | License |
+—————————–+———-+——————–+—————–+———+
… …

MariaDB User Feedback

One thing which we, as developers of MariaDB, run into is that our personal database needs are not the same as many of our users. In fact, our needs are quite light compared to many. We have a MariaDB website, a company website, a knowledgebase, this blog, and that’s about it. None of them are particularly high traffic compared to what our customers have. But apart from talking to our customers, which are just a small percentage of the total MariaDB population, we wanted to have a way of finding out how MariaDB is used “in the real world”, so to speak. …