For reasons that escape me, timed processes on my Windows box(es) just stop for no good reason. I’ve mentioned this before; the latest casualty was mySQL replication (Linux box => Windoze box).

I’ve been using the Windows box mySQL server just for backups, and to get my hand in how to run mySQL on Windows. Useful skill; one of the big pluses of mySQL is that there are native Windows binaries for it.

OK. And replication – which ran fine for over a month – just crapped out.

I couldn’t figure it out. Still can’t.

So I did what every Windows user does: Re-install the damn code.

Actually, I didn’t have the binaries for mySQL, so I got the latest v3 binaries (3.23.58) from a mirror. (I’m running v3.23 on Linux, so just trying to keep conflicts down.)

Installed, did all the set-up – which, since I just did it recently, was a breeze.

But the damn Windows mySQL server kept crashing every time I turned on replication.

After hours of poking and prodding, a Google (thank god for Google and their ilk) search gave me the knowledge that I needed: v3.23.58 on Windoze has, um, replication issues.

There’s a work around – don’t start as service, make it a stand-alone, set account with privileges for this yada yada yada.

That’s bullshit. That’s a huge bug (and I don’t really know if it’s a mySQL or Windows issue).

So I downloaded a v4 binary, installed, turned on replication and … damn! It works.

Sweet.

And aggravating – once I knew of this replication issue, the entire process – from downloading the 12M (or so) binary file, installing, setting up permissions, cutting data over etc – took about 15 minutes.

I spent hours trying to get something that couldn’t work to work.

Who do I bill those hours to???