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When I was working on a customer support case I had the idea to solve this by the much less invasive method of User-Defined Functions (UDF).

UDF were introduced in MySQL 3.23 [ 2 ]. They provide the feasibility to enlarge the MySQL functionality by adding external code.

The clue is now that you also can use this external code to do some MySQL internal stuff.

My idea was now, instead of using gdb/ptrace to get the value of spin_wait_delay, to write and UDF to get and set this value.

The code for the UDF looks as follows:


  CREATE FUNCTION spin_wait_delay
  SELECT spin_wait_delay(5);
  SELECT spin_wait_delay();
  DROP FUNCTION spin_wait_delay;


/* STANDARD is defined, don't use any mysql functions */
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#ifdef __WIN__
typedef unsigned __int64 ulonglong;   /* Microsofts 64 bit types */
typedef __int64 longlong;
typedef unsigned long long ulonglong;
typedef long long longlong;
#endif /*__WIN__*/
#include <my_global.h>
#include <my_sys.h>
#if defined(MYSQL_SERVER)
#include <m_string.h>   /* To get strmov() */
/* when compiled as standalone */
#include <string.h>
#include <mysql.h>
#include <ctype.h>

// This is for our spin_wait_delay
#include "srv0srv.h"

static pthread_mutex_t LOCK_hostname;


/* These must be right or mysqld will not find the symbol! */

my_bool spin_wait_delay_init(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args, char *message);

longlong spin_wait_delay(UDF_INIT *initid, UDF_ARGS *args, char *is_null, char *error);

longlong spin_wait_delay(UDF_INIT *initid __attribute__((unused)), UDF_ARGS *args,
                    char *is_null __attribute__((unused)), char *error __attribute__((unused)))
  longlong val = 0;

  // We set it the value
  if ( args->arg_count == 1 ) {
    val = *((longlong*) args->args[0]);
          srv_spin_wait_delay = val;

  // We get the value
  val = (ulint)srv_spin_wait_delay;

        return val;

my_bool spin_wait_delay_init(UDF_INIT *initid __attribute__((unused)),
                        UDF_ARGS *args __attribute__((unused)),
                        char *message __attribute__((unused)))
  return 0;

#endif /* HAVE_DLOPEN */

This code can be compiled for example with the following command:

shell> gcc -shared -I/home/mysql/source/mysql-5.1.30/include \
-I/home/mysql/source/mysql-5.1.30/storage/innobase/include \
-o udf_spin_wait_delay.c

The achieved shared object file has to be copied to the following location in the MySQL binary tree:

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'plugin_dir';
| Variable_name | Value                             |

shell> cp /usr/local/mysql/lib/mysql/plugin/

Keep in mind that in older MySQL releases this procedure could be slightly different.

Then the UDF has to be loaded and activated in the database:

mysql> CREATE FUNCTION spin_wait_delay

To remove the UDF again you can use the following command:

mysql> DROP FUNCTION spin_wait_delay;

To check if an UDF is installed or to see which ones are installed the following command gives you the right answer:

mysql> SELECT * FROM mysql.func;
| name            | ret | dl                     | type     |
| spin_wait_delay |   2 | | function |

When the UDF is compiled and properly loaded into the database you can get the value of spin_wait_delay as follows:

mysql> SELECT spin_wait_delay();
| spin_wait_delay(5) |
|                  5 |

And now the real nice thing is that you can even set this value as follows:

mysql> SELECT spin_wait_delay(8);
| spin_wait_delay(8) |
|                  8 |

With this function we can make a static hard coded InnoDB value dynamically changeable. To make it permanent also after a database restart possibly the functionality of init_file could help you further [ 3 ].

With this concept we can think about implementing many missing things without touching the MySQL code itself or recompiling MySQL. Please let me know what is missing in your opinion and I can try to implement it. Because I am not a programmer the help of those guys would be very appreciated.

If anybody sees a problem with this method please let me know. I do not know about such things like thread safe and mutexes etc. But I think at least reading should not harm.

Caution: When you have a crash in your UDF the whole MySQL server will crash. So be careful and test it intensively!


You can find the udf_spin_wait_delay UDF in our User-Defined Function (UDF) collection.



[ Shinguz] said... Andrew pointed me to the following blog entry of Brian: [ Daemon Example (deamon plugin)] Thanks!

[ Mark Robson] said... I also tried to use mysql UDFs to call internal MySQL APIs. It works. All you really have to do is include the relevant headers, call the appropriate functions, and it just works. But it is a bit dangerous, as your compiled UDF will then be dependent on the '''exact''' MySQL version that you're using.
Mark Robsoncomment

[ Shinguz] said... Hi Mark, Thanks a lot for your feedback. And how is the correct way to make it version IN-dependent and thus better portable?

[ papagnome] said... Just FWIW, UDFs existed in 4.1 and I'm pretty sure in 4.0 as well. Thanks for the nice writeup!

[ Shinguz] said... Hi Papagnome, You are absolutely right, UDF's came in in 3.23 already (I was told). What was in my mind was more the pluggable stuff. This feature is very nice an pretty new. But somehow I did not manage to express what I wanted to... :) Regards, Oli

[ Shinguz] said... I was told that spin_wait_delay is exposed to public with the InnoDB pluggable storage engine 1.0.4. Seems I have to look for an other hidden variables now. :)

[ Jo] said... I wrote an interesting UDF you may be interested. JsMap - running JavaScript in MySQL

Has anyone tried to compile the code under Windows?