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2.12.1.7. Linux Alpha Notes

MySQL 3.23.12 is the first MySQL version that is tested on Linux-Alpha. If you plan to use MySQL on Linux-Alpha, you should ensure that you have this version or newer.

We have tested MySQL on Alpha with our benchmarks and test suite, and it appears to work nicely.

We currently build the MySQL binary packages on SuSE Linux 7.0 for AXP, kernel 2.4.4-SMP, Compaq C compiler (V6.2-505) and Compaq C++ compiler (V6.3-006) on a Compaq DS20 machine with an Alpha EV6 processor.

You can find the preceding compilers at http://www.support.compaq.com/alpha-tools/. By using these compilers rather than gcc, we get about 9–14% better MySQL performance.

Note that until MySQL version 3.23.52 and 4.0.2, we optimized the binary for the current CPU only (by using the -fast compile option). This means that for older versions, you can use our Alpha binaries only if you have an Alpha EV6 processor.

For all subsequent releases, we added the -arch generic flag to our compile options, which ensures that the binary runs on all Alpha processors. We also compile statically to avoid library problems. The configure command looks like this: 

CC=ccc CFLAGS="-fast -arch generic" CXX=cxx \
CXXFLAGS="-fast -arch generic -noexceptions -nortti" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --disable-shared \
    --with-extra-charsets=complex --enable-thread-safe-client \
    --with-mysqld-ldflags=-non_shared --with-client-ldflags=-non_shared

Some known problems when running MySQL on Linux-Alpha:

  • Debugging threaded applications like MySQL does not work with gdb 4.18. You should use gdb 5.1 instead.

  • If you try linking mysqld statically when using gcc, the resulting image dumps core at startup time. In other words, do not use --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static with gcc.