Hello everyone,

I'm considering upgrading to MT4 from MT3.2, and MT strongly recommends upgrading toMySQL4.1. However, I currently use 1and1.com hosting, and they only offer MySQL 4.0 and MySQL5.0.

According to 1and1:
"Please Note: MySQL 5.0 is still under development. In some cases, MySQL 5.0 might behave unstable. Unless you specifically require the functionality of a MySQL5 database, 1&1 recommends using MySQL 4."

- Is it safe to use MySQL5.0, or should I stick with MySQL 4.0?

- Also, if I do go to MySQL5.0, and my MT installation is currently in a MySQL4.0 database, is that going to be a problem switching over (i.e. do both the old and new MT installations have to be using the same database?)?

the people at 1and1 are in error (or else their info is old and outdated). MySQL 5.0 is the currently available general release and is stable. The 5.1 branch is the current beta. 4.x is not in active development anymore.

In any case, MT will run quite happily in either version of MySQL, although given a choice I'd go with MySQL 5. AFAIK MT doesn't use any MySQL features specific to any one version (although some plugins might). I upgraded from a MySQL 3.23.x install to a MySQL 5.0.22 recently without any problems.

Hey, that's great to know, imabug...thanks! Although...is it possible they might be using an older, beta-ish version of MySQL5? (I'm not even sure if that's possible..!)

YIKES!! -- One new question -- I just noticed that 1and1.com allows up to 50 MySQL databases per account, but only allows up to 100 MB of storage for each. The one I'm using for MT is currently at 85 MB...anything I can do to 1) free up space, and 2) use less space going forward? (I.e. what part of MT or my blog's content takes up the most space?)

Thanks!

Mike

that depends on how good they are at updating their software. MySQL 5.0 has been the stable release for a while now (almost two years I think, since about 5.0.15). Easiest thing to do is ask them what version of MySQL5 they have installed. If it's anything more recent than 5.0.15, then it's a stable release, but probably in need of updating if it's not 5.0.45.



Off the top of my head, I think the biggest space using tables in my MT database are the mt_entry and mt_log tables. Clearing the activity log can free up some space.

if 1and1 provides something like phpMyAdmin, you can use it to see what tables are using the most space in your DB.

there could also be a lot of unused space in your tables, which phpMyAdmin can also show you and take care of.

Thanks for the tips, imabug! I'll give it a shot.

In terms of space, in addition to the Activity Log, keep an eye on junk comments and TrackBacks. If you're not deleting these regularly (or having the auto-deleted after a set time) then you're going to be keeping these around in your database for not much gain to you.

Also, if you've upgraded, you may have tables in your database that relate to an old plugin you no longer have installed (Blacklist is the one I see most often); no point keeping those tables (prefixed mt_bl_ from memory) if they're not being used at all.

Hi Sarah and imabug,

Thanks for your suggestions. I checked, and 1and1 does indeed have phpAdmin setup, which I was able to explore a bit. Awesome. I noticed a ton of MT-Blacklist entries, just as Sarag suggested, and found a TON of "Keystroke" entries from the keystroke plugin (that seemed to be by far the biggest contributor). That's great news, now I know what I need to clear...

So...I've never used phpAdmin before. Do you know of any idiot-proof step-by-step guides for clearing out portions of tables? I want to make sure I don't "break" something.

Thanks so much for your help!

-Mike

Hi everyone,

So again, can anyone help me with this -- I want to delete a TON of log records, specifically for my Keystrokes plugin (and possibly also Blacklist) which makes up for the bulk of the log file, it seems.

I can see how to delete one at a time through phpmyadmin...how would I delete certain chunks or types of log data? What's the best/safest approach?

Thanks,

Mike

Hello --

So, I got distracted with other projects, and forgot my growing problem of shrinking database space in the database table. I happened to check recently, and I am currently OVERDRAWN on database space! I need to delete unnecessary records ASAP.

Could someone please help me -- how do I locate all the "MT-Blacklist" records and "Keystroke" records and delete them in one shot? I see how to do one at a time, but there are apparently 1000s of these....

Please help!

Thanks,

Mike