MySQL 5.1 servers take early bath

People clambering to get their hands on the latest candidate release of MySQL 5.1 were yesterday locked out of Sun Microsystems' download servers for several hours.

Sun’s latest version of the popular open source database was supposed to land at the end of last month after its original pencilled-in first quarter release was delayed by the company.

El Reg reader Adam told us: "I've been trying to download a MySQL candidate release 5.1 all day but the darn servers seem to be broken. It asks me to select a mirror and then does nothing, not even listing any mirrors.

“It turns out this is for all its downloads for MySQL.com. So frustrating when you are up against a deadline.”

We asked Sun if it had been experiencing server problems with its tsystems. A spokeswoman for the firm told us via email late yesterday: “It turns out that over the last few weeks, MySQL had been updating its website's infrastructure.

“One recent change broke the download tool for a few hours this morning, but it should be fixed and working normally now.”

MySQL's databases are widely used online. When Sun bought the outfit in January for $1bn, the vendor said it hoped to increase usage in more traditional IT and enterprise settings. Indeed, the MySQL 5.1 release candidate features a number of bug fixes and bread-and-butter database features targeting enterprise deployment.

The database is used by many well-known websites, including tech giants Google, Yahoo! and Nokia – 50,000 copies a day are downloaded.

Sun, which is in the midst of significant layoffs, yesterday posted Q4 prelims in an attempt to calm investors' jittery nerves ahead of publishing its quarterly results on 1 August. ®