For full changes, see http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/news-5-1-47.html.
Here is important changes:
InnoDB Plugin Notes:
* InnoDB Plugin has been upgraded to version 1.0.8. This version
is considered of General Availability (GA) quality. InnoDB
Plugin Change History, may contain information in addition to
those changes reported here.
In this release, the InnoDB Plugin is included in source and
binary distributions, except RHEL3, RHEL4, SuSE 9 (x86, x86_64,
ia64), and generic Linux RPM packages. It also does not work for
FreeBSD 6 and HP-UX or for Linux on generic ia64.
Functionality added or changed:
* InnoDB stores redo log records in a hash table during
recovery. On 64-bit systems, this hash table was 1/8 of the
buffer pool size. To reduce memory usage, the dimension of the
hash table was reduced to 1/64 of the buffer pool size (or 1/128
on 32-bit systems). (Bug#53122)
Security fixed:
* Security Fix: The server failed to check the table name argument
of a COM_FIELD_LIST command packet for validity and compliance
to acceptable table name standards. This could be exploited to
bypass almost all forms of checks for privileges and table-level
grants by providing a specially crafted table name argument to
COM_FIELD_LIST.
In MySQL 5.0 and above, this allowed an authenticated user with
SELECT privileges on one table to obtain the field definitions
of any table in all other databases and potentially of other
MySQL instances accessible from the server's file system.
Additionally, for MySQL version 5.1 and above, an authenticated
user with DELETE or SELECT privileges on one table could delete or
read content from any other table in all databases on this server,
and potentially of other MySQL instances accessible from the
server's file system. (Bug#53371, CVE-2010-1848)
* Security Fix: The server was susceptible to a buffer-overflow
attack due to a failure to perform bounds checking on the table
name argument of a COM_FIELD_LIST command packet. By sending
long data for the table name, a buffer is overflown, which could
be exploited by an authenticated user to inject malicious
code. (Bug#53237, CVE-2010-1850)
* Security Fix: The server could be tricked into reading packets
indefinitely if it received a packet larger than the maximum
size of one packet. (Bug#50974, CVE-2010-1849)
For release MySQL 5.1 specific information please refer:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysql-nutshell.html
MySQL is a SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. SQL is the
most popular database language in the world. MySQL is a client-server
implementation that consists of a server daemon `mysqld' and many
different client programs/libraries.
The main goals of MySQL are speed and robustness.
The base upon which MySQL is built is a set of routines that have been
used in a highly demanding production environment for many years. While
MySQL is still in development it already offers a rich and highly useful
function set.
The official way to pronounce 'MySQL' is 'My Ess Que Ell' (Not MY-SEQUEL).
This package contains the MySQL client programs and libraries.
