EST. 2026 — Notes from real server work SYSADMIN · SECURITY · AI · DIRECTADMIN Issue 01
THE SYSADMIN ALMANAC
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Myisam

#Myisam

2 articles
MariaDB on defaults — a 128M buffer pool on a 55 GB RAM server
Linux

MariaDB on defaults — a 128M buffer pool on a 55 GB RAM server

A 16 core server with 55 GB RAM and an SSD, but MariaDB still had the default 128 MB buffer pool. The result was 50 million disk reads in 5 days. The full before-and-after settings, service name and config path traps on DirectAdmin/Debian, rollback steps, and another 500 MyISAM tables waiting for conversion.

#mariadb#mysql#performance#tuning
10 min read·13 Aug
One Query Hung for 54 Minutes, Causing Sitewide 504s via MyISAM Locks
Linux

One Query Hung for 54 Minutes, Causing Sitewide 504s via MyISAM Locks

A single 30 MB table caused 504s on every page across the site, even with 9.5 GB of RAM still free — I traced information_schema.PROCESSLIST to a single SELECT that had been stuck for 54 minutes on a MyISAM table, cascading into metadata locks across the server, with an immediate fix and ways to prevent it from happening again.

#mariadb#mysql#myisam#innodb
10 min read·6 Aug