Prepare the MySQL database for the Tigase server

This guide describes how to prepare the MySQL database for connecting the Tigase server to it.

Basic setup

The MySQL database can be prepared in many ways. Most of Linux distributions contain tools which allow you to go through all steps from the shell command line. To make sure, however it works on all platforms the same way I show first how to do it under MySQL command line client.

Configuring from MySQL command line tool

Run the MySQL command line client in either Linux or MS Windows environment and enter following instructions:

1. Create the database for the Tigase server:

    mysql> create database tigasedb;
   

2. Add the tigase_user user and grant him access to the tigasedb database. Depending on how you plan to connect to the database (locally or over the network) use one of following commands or all if you are not sure:
   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from any network address.

    mysql> GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user@'%'
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd';
   

   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from localhost.

    mysql> GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user@'localhost'
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd';
   

   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from local machine only.

    mysql> GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd';
   

   The following error may manifest itself in many ways from the NullPointerException in the Tigase server log file to message like this:
   "User does not have access to metadata required to determine stored procedure parameter types."
   If rights can not be granted, configure connection with "noAccessToProcedureBodies=true" to have driver generate parameters that represent INOUT strings irregardless of actual parameter types. To our knowledge best solution, right now, to this is to grant following permissions to this user.

   For the Tigase server version 4.x and later additional permissions must be granted for the database user:

    mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON mysql.proc TO 'tigase_user'@'localhost';
   mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON mysql.proc TO 'tigase_user'@'%';
   mysql> GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE ON mysql.proc TO 'tigase_user';
   

   And now you can update user permission changes in the database:

    mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   

3. Load database schema to initialize the Tigase server database space with the schema file corresponding to the Tigase version you use. First, switch to the database you have just created:

    mysql> use tigasedb;
   

   Assuming you run the mysql client in Linux from the Tigase installation directory. If you run the Tigase server all versions below 4.0:

    mysql> source database/mysql-schema-3.sql;
   

   For the Tigase server version 4.x and later you have to use proper schema version:

    mysql> source database/mysql-schema-4.sql;
   

   For the Tigase server version 5.0 and later you have to use proper schema version:

    mysql> source database/mysql-schema-5.sql;
   

   For the Tigase server version 5.1 and later you have to use proper schema version:

    mysql> source database/mysql-schema-5-1.sql;
   

   On Windows you have probably to enter the full path:

    mysql> source c:/Program Files/Tigase/database/mysql-schema-5.1.sql;
   

   The initialization schema file should be also available locally in database/ directory of your Tigase installation.

Configuring from the Linux shell command line

Follow steps below to prepare the MySQL database:

1. Create the database space for the Tigase server:

    mysqladmin -p create tigasedb
   

2. Add the tigase_user user and grant him access to the tigasedb database. Depending on how you plan to connect to the database (locally or over the network) use one of following commands or all if you are not sure:
   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from any network address.

    echo "GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user@'%' \
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd'; \
                   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql -u root -pdbpass mysql
   

   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from localhost.

    echo "GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user@'localhost' \
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd'; \
                   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql -u root -pdbpass mysql
   

   Grant access to tigase_user connecting from local machine only.

    echo "GRANT ALL ON tigasedb.* TO tigase_user \
                   IDENTIFIED BY 'tigase_passwd'; \
                   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql -u root -pdbpass mysql
   

3. Load database schema to initialize the Tigase server from the file that corresponds to the Tigase version you want to use. If you run the Tigase server all versions below 4.0:

    mysql -u dbuser -p tigasedb < database/mysql-schema-3.sql
   

   For the Tigase server version 4.x and later you have to use proper schema version:

    mysql -u dbuser -p tigasedb < database/mysql-schema-4.sql;
   

   For the Tigase server version 5.0 and later you have to use proper schema version:

   mysql -u dbuser -p tigasedb < database/mysql-schema-5.sql;
   

   For the Tigase server version 5.1 and later you have to use proper schema version:

    mysql -u dbuser -p tigasedb < database/mysql-schema-5-1.sql;
   

   Above commands should be executed from the main Tigase directory. The initialization schema file should be also available locally in database/ directory of your Tigase installation.

Configuring MySQL for UTF-8 support

In the my.conf put following lines:

[mysql]
default-character-SET=utf8
[client]
default-character-SET=utf8
[mysqld]
init_connect='SET collation_connection = utf8_general_ci; SET NAMES utf8;'
character-set-server=utf8
default-character-SET=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
skip-character-set-client-handshake

Then connect to the database and from the command line shell check settings:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_database';
SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'character_set_client';

If any of these shows something else then 'utf8' then you have to correct it:

ALTER DATABASE tigasedb DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;

You can now also test your database installation if it accepts UTF-8 data. Best way is just to create an account with UTF-8 characters:

call TigAddUserPlainPw('żółw@some.domain.com', 'żółw');

And then check of the account has been created:

SELECT * FROM tig_users WHERE user_id = 'żółw@some.domain.com';

If the last command gives you no results it means there is still something wrong with settings. You might also check you shell settings to make sure your command line shell supports UTF-8 characters and passes them correctly to MySQL:

export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LOCALE=UTF-8
export LESSCHARSET='utf-8'

It seems to me that MySQL 5.0.x also needs an extra parameters in the connection string: '&useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8' while MySQL 5.1.x seems to not need it but it doesn't hurt to have it for both versions. You have to edit 'etc/init.properties' file and append this to the database connection string.

For MySQL 5.1.x, however, you need also updated code for all database stored procedures and functions used by the Tigase. They are updated for Tigase version 4.4.x and up, for the time being if you use older version of the Tigase server you can reload stored procedures using the file from SVN.

 Other MySQL setting worth considering

There is a number of other options useful, especially for a performance reasons. Please note, you have to review them as some of them may impact data reliability and are useful for performance or load tests installations only.

# InnoDB seems to be a better choice
# so lets make it a default DB engine
default-storage-engine = innodb

Some the general MySQL settings which mainly affect performance:

key_buffer           = 64M
max_allowed_packet   = 32M
sort_buffer_size     = 64M
net_buffer_length    = 64K
read_buffer_size     = 16M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 16M
thread_stack         = 192K
thread_cache_size    = 8
query_cache_limit    = 10M
query_cache_size     = 64M

InnoDB specific settings:

# Keep data in a separate file for each table
innodb_file_per_table           = 1
# Allocate memory for data buffers
innodb_buffer_pool_size         = 1000M
innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 100M
# A location of the MySQL database
innodb_data_home_dir            = /home/databases/mysql/
innodb_log_group_home_dir       = /home/databases/mysql/
# The main thing here is the 'autoextend' property
# without it your data file may reach maximum size and
# no more records can be added to the table.
innodb_data_file_path           = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
innodb_log_file_size            = 10M
innodb_log_buffer_size          = 32M
# Some other performance affecting settings
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit  = 2
innodb_lock_wait_timeout        = 50
innodb_thread_concurrency       = 16

Timezone settings. Tigase use TIMESTAMP fields for several fields. Values of such fields are converted from the current time zone to UTC for storage, and converted back from UTC to the current time zone for retrieval. In some cases timezone conversion could cause problems and therefore it might be helpful to avoid it. The simplest way to achieve it is by setting timezone to +00:00:

 time-zone = '+00:00'

I am certainly not a database expert nor MySQL expert and I do not pretend to be one. So any comments or suggestions you may have are very welcome and appreciated.