4.11.5.5 Linux-Alpha

The big problem on Linux-Alpha is that there are still some problems with threads in glibc on this platform. You should start by getting the newest glibc version you can find.

Note that before you run any programs that use threads (like mysqld, thr_alarm or thr_lock), you should raise the shared memory limit (with ulimit). The MySQL benchmarks are known to fail if you forget to do this!

Configure MySQL with the following command:

shell> CC=gcc CCFLAGS="-Dalpha_linux_port" \
       CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -Dalpha_linux_port -felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" \
       ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql

Try to compile mysys/thr_lock and mysys/thr_alarm. Test that these programs work! (Invoke each one with no arguments. Each should end with test_succeeded if everything was okay.)

After installing MySQL, uncomment the ulimit command in safe_mysqld and add options to increase shared memory.

Note that Linux-Alpha is still an alpha-quality platform for MySQL. With the newest glibc, you have a very good chance of it working.

If you have problems with signals (MySQL dies unexpectedly under high load) you may have found an OS bug with threads and signals. In this case you can tell MySQL not to use signals by configuring with:

shell> CFLAGS=-DDONT_USE_THR_ALARM \
       CXXFLAGS=-DDONT_USE_THR_ALARM \
       ./configure ...

This doesn't affect the performance of MySQL, but has the side effect that you can't kill clients that are ``sleeping'' on a connection with mysqladmin kill or mysqladmin shutdown. Instead, the client will die when it issues its next command.