[BlueOnyx:24775] Re: 5209R: Outdated MariaDB version

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Tobias,

> Later on we realised that this is not true: the running version of
> mysqld is 5.5.40 (current version is 5.5.68):
>
>   [user at redacted ~]# rpm -qf /usr/libexec/mysqld
>   mariadb-galera-server-5.5.40-4.el7.x86_64

I had to check and rack my brain about this. We do have this on a 5209R:

[root at 5209r ~]# rpm -qa|grep mariadb|sort
mariadb-5.5.68-1.el7.x86_64
mariadb-devel-5.5.68-1.el7.x86_64
mariadb-embedded-5.5.68-1.el7.x86_64
mariadb-embedded-devel-5.5.68-1.el7.x86_64
mariadb-galera-common-5.5.40-4.el7.x86_64
mariadb-galera-server-5.5.40-4.el7.x86_64
mariadb-libs-5.5.68-1.el7.x86_64

The issue is clearly revolving around these two RPMs, which are indeed
served out of the BlueOnyx-5209R repo:

mariadb-galera-common-5.5.40-4.el7.x86_64
mariadb-galera-server-5.5.40-4.el7.x86_64

On a "naked" CentOS 7 you would have a mariadb-server.x86_64 installed
instead that's served out of the regular CentOS 7 OS repository.

> I suppose there is a reason we are not just using the standard 
> daemon from the CentOS project..?

There probably is, but now (five years later) I don't recall all the
details.

>From what I recall: In the early days of 5209R someone insisted on
including Galera support in MariaDB and I obliged. The CentOS repo
didn't have it, so I grabbed the SRPM elsewhere, rebuilt it and stuffed
it into the BlueOnyx 5209R OS repo. I don't even exactly recall from
where, but the RPM changelog seems to suggest it was from one version or
other of Fedora.

Then nothing else was done about it and the matter was quickly forgotten.

Galera support (i.e.: SQL server clustering) is a function that
eventually got merged into MariaDB anyway, so it went away as stand
alone package. Even MariaDB.org doesn't have a more recent version than
5.5.61 of Galera and we can't use that, as their RPM naming is different
and they (on principle) don't publish SRPMs, because they're "special".

One way or another this is a complicated situation where I have to tread
very carefully to not cause any breakage and outage.

We do have some updated MariaDB PKGs in the shop and I have to carefully
analyze what happens if I pull "mariadb-galera-common" and
"mariadb-galera-server" from the BlueOnyx repos and someone runs "yum
update". Or uninstalls a PKG with a newer MariaDB and it tries to revert
back to MariaDB-5.5. There are six ways 'til Sunday that this can go to
hell in a hand-basket.

So this will need some careful testing before I can present a solution.

Many thanks for bringing this to my attention.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber