http://www.linuxask.com/questions/disable-dns-hostname-lookup-in-mysql

I noted the ancient (3.23) options.
I fully agree with the “document what you do and why” and “get more info” (32 bit OS is very common, and incomplete/incorrect description from client – after all, it’s not their main focus).
But apart from that, the important thing to realise is that there’s more than one way to get good results.
I would do some immediate tweaking in the live server to relieve the pain, but only settings that won’t affect overall memory use and such… basically correcting some of the borked defaults. Then collecting more info is the next step.

“Shlomi Noach made such a plea I have to give it to him”: this is an old technique of mine. It’s in the open domain and you can use it. However, I warn you: it will only work once per target person.
I’ll also willingly give the book up to someone else if you think he’d get it were it not for my plea.

Like you said, there are no perfect answers, and just 5 parameters is quite limiting.
Many parameters are questionable. It’s easy to fall into the trap of “well, the parameter is specified – hence it must be like this”.

I’m keeping a sample configuration file on my blog (one of my earliest post), which contains what I consider to be a good listing of parameters. When I get to look at a new my.cnf file, I always compare to my sample file, to see what’s missing; what’s unreasonable etc.

Your idea of this competition was great! Have you any more interesting books? Make this a tradition!

PS. I think it’s only fair to remind that Sheeri co-authored this book with Keith Murphy. His name seems to be dropped most of the time.

Shlomi