MusicBrainz – Page 4 – MetaBrainz Blog

MusicBrainz schema change release, 2024-05-13 (with upgrade instructions)

We’re happy to announce the release of our May 2024 schema change now! Thanks to all who were patient during yesterday’s downtime as we released everything to our production servers. Final testing for the mirrors also took some more time. Note that the initially announced upgrades for MusicBrainz search engine are just about to reach our beta website, and thus are postponed for mirrors too but can be expected for the few next releases.

This is a fairly small schema change release which mostly removes unused code and improves things behind the scenes. Of the schema change tickets, there are only two that will directly affect users as they browse and edit in MusicBrainz. The first (MBS-13421) adds genre collections, so that editors can for example make a list of their favorite genres. The second (MBS-13514) allows entering 6-digit label codes.

Additionally, derat gratified us with making aliases more visible in the website, and some other improvements, while yellowhatpro polished cover art priority.

Thanks to chaban, cyberskull, thomasegger, Toad King, and wileyfoxyx for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 0x1026, Anonymous, “ApeKattQuest, MonkeyPython”, AshPigeon, Autom, brtc, chaban, claybiockiller, danBLOO, darlingz, eigenric, Evergarden, GABG, hashflu, hesheng, julian45, kellnerd, LiarOnce, Philipp Wolfer, salo.rock, suming, Vac31., wileyfoxyx, x1ao4, xiaole_0714223, yangmouren, yyb987, and zemeles for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Downtime today for PostgreSQL / MusicBrainz schema change upgrade: 17:00 UTC (10am PT, 1pm ET, 7pm CEST)

Today (Monday, May 13) at 17:00 UTC (10am PT, 1pm ET, 7:00pm CEST), we’ll be:

Upgrading our production database server to PostgreSQL v16.
Performing the MusicBrainz schema change upgrade.

See the previous announcement on this topic for more information.

Expect MusicBrainz and services that depend on its database (MetaBrainz, ListenBrainz, the Cover Art Archive, CritiqueBrainz, BookBrainz) to be down for the hour, but we’ll be working to restore services as quickly as possible.

Afterward, we’ll post instructions here on how to upgrade your MusicBrainz mirror server (whether using musicbrainz-docker or otherwise).

P.S. The initially announced upgrades for MusicBrainz search engine are just about to reach our beta website, and thus are postponed for mirrors too.

Welcome Summer of Code 2024 contributors!

We are thrilled to announce the selection of 8 contributors to work with us for this year’s Google Summer of Code program!

MetaBrainz received many great applications this year. Selecting the final contributors was tough and involved deliberating various factors – what these contributors did right is getting in early, engaging with our community, presenting specific and detailed proposals, and proving excellent communication skills and the ability to integrate our feedback back into their proposals.

Thank you to all contributors who submitted a proposal with us!

MusicBrainz Server hotfix, 2024-04-30

A lack of robustness in MusicBrainz Server’s usage of Postgres indexes, combined with a malicious trend of jamming music databases, ended up with [MBS-13536] blocking the replication for mirrors having legacy indexes and [MBS-13555] blocking the creation of new mirrors. Additionally, a patch for [MBS-7646] showing aliases in more places, currently deployed in beta, needed to be partly deployed on the main servers to ensure cache consistency. Those are the reasons for this hotfix ahead of the upcoming schema change release.

While the issues [MBS-13536] and [MBS-13555] have been affecting mirrors, preventing these from happening again is done through [MBS-13562] only on the side of our main servers, thus no MusicBrainz Docker release is needed.

Thanks to derat for continuously contributing to the MusicBrainz Server code. Thanks to chaban, lotooo, Matthieu42, and nohattila for having reported those bugs. And thanks to all others who keep translating and testing the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-04-30-hotfix.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-04-09

This release includes a rewrite of the artist credit editor, which should make it more reliable and also allows undoing row removals, the bane of the too-quick-for-their-own-good editor! It also includes a lot of other small fixes and improvements.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

In case your mirror is older than Postgres 12 migration in 2020, if some update scripts didn’t work for some reason back in that time, you might have the following error in the file mirror.log or mirror.log.1 since yesterday:

ERROR:  index row requires xxxxx bytes, maximum size is 8191

Then open a PostgreSQL invite, for example as follows:

admin/psql

Finally, run the following SQL instructions:

SET search_path = musicbrainz, public;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_musicbrainz_collate;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_name;
DROP INDEX IF EXISTS track_idx_txt;

See MBS-13536 for more info.

Thanks to HibiscusKazeneko, kellnerd, lotooo, mr_maxis, sammyrayy and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to BestSteve, brtc, Leonie2, salo.rock, Vac31, wileyfoxyx and ypkim for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-04-09.

Schema change release: May 13, 2024

MusicBrainz is announcing a new database schema change release for May 13, 2024. The main change will be to upgrade from PostgreSQL 12 to 16. Even though it isn’t database-related, Perl will also be upgraded from 5.30 to 5.38. Those will become the minimum required versions. Other changes are mostly clean-up and refactoring, with the exception of support for genre collections and (addendum) 6-digit label codes.

A few weeks after, the search engine will also be upgraded from Solr 7 to 9. Search indexes will have to be rebuilt on mirrors, which takes some time. Gladsomely, it will allow us to implement search improvements again.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-03-11

This release mostly includes small improvements and bugfixes, plus a new report for wrong bootleg releases and a few new locales available for aliases.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to derat for having contributed with code to better display documentation pages on small screens. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, derat, jesus2099, RandomMushroom128, sammyrayy and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to abbedabb, brtc, cijic, Dimlbur, Gateway31, hedw1gP, salo.rock, Vac31 and wileyfoxyx for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-03-11.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-02-16

This Friday’s server update mainly features performance improvements related to how data is cached internally. It is conveyed with a fair number of other improvements and bugfixes.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to julian45 for having contributed with code to better handle OTOTOY links. Thanks to chaban, Cyberskull, fabe56, Freso, HibiscusKazeneko, kellnerd, ms0010, yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to akaN@NAME, Fjuro, GABG, hashflu, Hossein.income, kellnerd, mfmeulenbelt, Philipp Wolfer, salo.rock, and Vac31 for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-02-16.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2024-01-08

Happy New Year 2024! We hope that you enjoyed your Year in Music 2023. Here is a quite small but rapid release as we are returning to a normal rhythm of server updates.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to derat for having contributed to the code. Thanks to chaban, jesus2099, and yindesu for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to 0x1026, ApeKattQuest, ChurruKa, danBLOO, DyingSlacker, kellnerd, larsimore, Markus O, mfmeulenbelt, outsidecontext, salo.rock, Vac31, wileyfoxyx, xuanqidongjim, yyb987, and zemeles for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2024-01-08.

MusicBrainz Server update, 2023-12-20

Winter release is coming, with a lot of refactoring behind the scenes. In particular, we fixed a lot of text in the website user interface, to more closely follow the design guidelines concocted by Aerozol for a long time. See the below list of tickets for more functional changes.

A new release of MusicBrainz Docker is also available that matches this update of MusicBrainz Server. See the release notes for update instructions.

Thanks to derat and jesus2099 for having contributed patches. Thanks to ApeKattQuest, chaban, chancey, lotheric, and mr_maxis for having reported bugs and suggested improvements. Thanks to goliv, kellnerd, mfmeulenbelt, outsidecontext, salo.rock, Vac31, and yangmouren for updating the translations. And thanks to all others who tested the beta version!

The git tag is v-2023-12-20.