So it’s sunday and I decide to run apt-get on my Debian box which hosts this here blog and the peapod project page. Mysql 5 gets an update. apt-get stops it: apt-get starts it: and it dies on it’s arse.

Feb 11 15:54:02 hlynes mysqld[707]: 070211 15:54:02 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete
Feb 11 15:54:02 hlynes mysqld[707]:
Feb 11 15:54:03 hlynes mysqld_safe[6754]: ended
Feb 11 15:55:46 hlynes init: Trying to re-exec init
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: mysqld got signal 11;
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: This could be because you hit a bug.
It is also possible that this binary
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: or one of the libraries it was linked
against is corrupt, improperly built,
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: or misconfigured. This error can also
be caused by malfunctioning hardware.
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: We will try our best to scrape up som
e info that will hopefully help diagnose
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: the problem, but since we have alread
y crashed, something is definitely wrong
Feb 11 16:01:45 hlynes mysqld_safe[10043]: and this may fail.

After much googling it turns out to be to do with the fact that this is a Bytemark virtual machine running under UML. Apparently the tls library which is part of NPTL does some very strange things with memory that work just fine on a normal kernel but not one running under UML.

Anyway the workaround is to move /lib/tls out of the way. Apparently this can fox apache also.