Features and Variables¶

The configuration options and table columns for the following features have been modified in Percona Server 5.5:

Grepping Old Variables¶

You can check if old variables are being used in your configuration file by issuing the following line in a shell:

egrep -ni 'innodb_adaptive_checkpoint|suppress_log_warning_1592|innodb_pass_corrupt_table|innodb_expand_import|innodb_auto_lru_dump|log_slow_timestamp_every|slow_query_log_microseconds_timestamp|use_global_log_slow_control|enable_query_response_time_stats|innodb_buffer_pool_shm_key|innodb_buffer_pool_shm_checksum' /PATH/TO/my.cnf

New Features¶

You may also want to check the new features available in Percona Server 5.5:

• Multiple Adaptive Hash Search Partitions
• Crash-Resistant Replication
• Show Engine InnoDB Status
• Plugins

All plugins not included with Percona Server will have to be recompiled for Percona Server 5.5. There is a new plugin interface that complements the plugin API, plugins must be recompiled and linked to libmysqlservices. The plugins bundled with the server are already linked, you can list the installed plugins with the SHOW PLUGINS statement:

mysql> SHOW PLUGINS;
+-----------------------+--------+--------------------+---------+---------+
| Name                  | Status | Type               | Library | License |
+-----------------------+--------+--------------------+---------+---------+
| binlog                | ACTIVE | STORAGE ENGINE     | NULL    | GPL     |
 ...
+-----------------------+--------+--------------------+---------+---------+

For more information, see:

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/plugin-services.html
• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/plugin-installing-uninstalling.html

Upgrading from MySQL 5.1¶

If you are upgrading from MySQL 5.1 instead of Percona Server 5.1, you should take into account that the InnoDB Plugin has been included in the standard MySQL 5.5 distribution as default for the InnoDB storage engine.

This change does not affect Percona Server as it has the XtraDB storage engine - an enhanced version of InnoDB - built-in since the 5.1 series. If you are migrating from MySQL 5.1.X, and you were using the InnoDB plugin, make sure to remove it from the configuration file by deleting the following two lines from the [mysqld] section:

[mysqld]
ignore-builtin-innodb  # <- DELETE
plugin-load=innodb=ha_innodb_plugin.so # <- DELETE

otherwise, the server won’t start. Strictly speaking, the ignore-builtin-innodb option will disable XtraDB in Percona Server 5.5 if set, and the server will not start if no other default storage engine is specified (i.e. default-storage-engine=MyISAM).

Also, the variable innodb_file_io_threads has been replaced by innodb_read_io_threads and innodb_write_io_threads (these variables were already introduced in Percona Server 5.1). All of them defaults to 4, you should replace the old variable with the two new ones with the proper value (or delete it if the default - 4 - is acceptable).

Privileges¶

The schema of the grants tables in MySQL 5.5 has changed and a new table has been introduced, proxy_priv.

The conversion to the new schema will be handled by mysql_upgrade (see below).

Logs¶

The server will not rename the current log file with the suffix -old when issuing a FLUSH LOGS statement.

The renaming must be done by the user before flushing. It is important to note this as if it is not renamed before, the past log will be lost.

Numeric calculations¶

On the numeric side, the server includes a new a library for conversions between strings and numbers, dtoa.

This library provides the basis for an improved conversion between string or DECIMAL values and approximate-value (FLOAT or DOUBLE) numbers. Also, all numeric operators and functions on integer, floating-point and DECIMAL values throw an out of range error (ER_DATA_OUT_OF_RANGE) rather than returning an incorrect value or NULL.

If an application rely on previous numeric results, it may have to be adjusted to the new precision or behavior.

Replication¶

When upgrading in a replication environment, a change in handling of IF NOT EXISTS results in an incompatibility for statement-based replication from a MySQL 5.1 master prior to 5.1.51 to a MySQL 5.5 slave.

If you use CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS ... SELECT statements, upgrade the master first to 5.1.51 or higher.

Note that this differs from the usual replication upgrade advice of upgrading the slave first.

Indexes¶

The stopword file is loaded and searched using latin1 if character_set_server is ucs2, utf16, or utf32. If any table was created with FULLTEXT indexes while the server character set was ucs2, utf16, or utf32, it should be repaired using this statement REPAIR TABLE tbl_name QUICK;.

Error Messages¶

The --language option has been deprecated and is an alias for --lc-messages-dir and --lc-messages.

Also, error messages are now constructed in UTF-8 and returned with character_set_results encoding.

Unicode Support¶

The Unicode implementation has been extended to provide support for supplementary characters that lie outside the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), introducing the utf16, utf32 and utf8mb4 charsets.

If you are considering upgrading from utf8 to utf8mb4 to take advantage of the supplementary characters, you may have to adjust the size of the fields and indexes in the future. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/charset-unicode-upgrading.html.

Upgrading to utf8mb4 will not take place unless you explicitly change the charset, i.e. with a ALTER TABLE… statement.

Changes in SQL¶

The following changes require modifications in the SQL statements in the client side:

• INTO clauses are no longer accepted in nested SELECT statements. Modify the SQL statements to not contain the clause.
• Alias declarations outside table_reference are not allowed for multiple-table DELETE statements. Modify those statements to use aliases only inside table_reference part.
• Alias resolution does not require qualification and alias reference should not be qualified with the database name.
• New reserved words:
  • GENERAL
  • IGNORE_SERVER_IDS
  • MASTER_HEARTBEAT_PERIOD
  • MAXVALUE
  • RESIGNAL
  • SIGNAL
  • SLOW
• TRUNCATE TABLE fails for a XtraDB table if there are any FOREIGN KEY constraints from other tables that reference the table. As XtraDB always use the fast truncation technique in 5.5 - equivalent to DROP TABLE and CREATE TABLE - you should modify the SQL statements to issue DELETE FROM table_name for such tables instead of TRUNCATE TABLE or an error will be returned in that cases.

DEB-based distributions¶

Having done the full backup (or dump if possible), stop the server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld stop

and proceed to do the modifications needed in your configuration file, as explained at the beginning of this guide.

Then install the new server with:

$ sudo apt-get install percona-server-server-5.5

The installation script will run automatically mysql_upgrade to migrate to the new grant tables, rebuild the indexes where needed and then start the server.

Note that this procedure is the same for upgrading from MySQL 5.1 or 5.5 to Percona Server 5.5.

RPM-based distributions¶

Having done the full backup (and dump if possible), stop the server:

$ /sbin/service mysql stop

and check your installed packages with:

$ rpm -qa | grep Percona-Server
Percona-Server-client-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm
Percona-Server-server-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm
Percona-Server-shared-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm

You may have a forth, shared-compat, which is for compatibility purposes.

After checking, proceed to remove them without dependencies:

$ rpm -qa | grep Percona-Server | xargs rpm -e --nodeps

It is important that you remove it without dependencies as many packages may depend on these (as they replace mysql) and will be removed if omitted.

Note that this procedure is the same for upgrading from MySQL 5.1 or 5.5 to Percona Server 5.5: just grep '^mysql-' instead of Percona-Server and remove them.

You will have to install the following packages:

• Percona-Server-server-55
• Percona-Server-client-55

$ yum install Percona-Server-server-55 Percona-Server-client-55

Once installed, proceed to modify your configuration file - my.cnf - and recompile the plugins if necessary, as explained at the beginning of this guide.

As the schema of the grant table has changed, the server must be started without reading them:

$  /usr/sbin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables --user=mysql &

and use mysql_upgrade to migrate to the new grant tables, it will rebuild the indexes needed and do the modifications needed:

$ mysql_upgrade
...
OK

Once this is done, just restart the server as usual:

$ /sbin/service mysql restart

If it can’t find the PID file, kill the server and start it normally:

$ killall /usr/sbin/mysqld
$ /sbin/service mysql start

DEB-based distributions¶

Having done the full backup (and dump if possible), stop the server:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld stop

and remove the installed packages with their dependencies:

$ sudo apt-get autoremove percona-server-server-51 percona-server-client-51

Once removed, proceed to do the modifications needed in your configuration file, as explained at the beginning of this guide.

Then, download the following packages for your architecture:

• percona-server-server-5.5
• percona-server-client-5.5
• percona-server-common-5.5
• libperconaserverclient16

At the moment of writing this guide, for Ubuntu Maverick on i686, a way of doing this is:

$ wget -r -l 1 -nd -A deb -R "*dev*" http://www.percona.com/redir/downloads/Percona-Server-5.5/Percona-Server-5.5.12-20.3/deb/maverick/x86_64/

Install them in one command:

$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

The installation won’t succeed as there will be missing dependencies. To handle this, use:

$ apt-get -f install

and all dependencies will be handled by apt.

The installation script will run automatically mysql_upgrade to migrate to the new grant tables and rebuild the indexes where needed.

RPM-based distributions¶

Having done the full backup (and dump if possible), stop the server:

$ /sbin/service mysql stop

and check your installed packages:

$ rpm -qa | grep Percona-Server
Percona-Server-client-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm
Percona-Server-server-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm
Percona-Server-shared-51-5.1.57-rel12.8.232.rhel5.i686.rpm

You may have a forth, shared-compat, which is for compatibility purposes.

After checked that, proceed to remove them without dependencies:

$ rpm -qa | grep Percona-Server | xargs rpm -e --nodeps

It is important that you remove it without dependencies as many packages may depend on these (as they replace mysql) and will be removed if ommited.

Note that this procedure is the same for upgrading from MySQL 5.1 to Percona Server 5.5, just grep '^mysql-' instead of Percona-Server and remove them.

Download the following packages for your architecture:

• Percona-Server-server-55
• Percona-Server-client-55
• Percona-Server-shared-55

At the moment of writing this guide, a way of doing this is:

$ wget -r -l 1 -nd -A rpm -R "*devel*,*debuginfo*" http://www.percona.com/redir/downloads/Percona-Server-5.5/Percona-Server-5.5.12-20.3/RPM/rhel5/i686/

Install them in one command:

$ rpm -ivh Percona-Server-server-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm \
Percona-Server-client-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm \
Percona-Server-shared-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm

If you don’t install all “at the same time”, you will need to do it in a specific order - shared, client, server:

$ rpm -ivh Percona-Server-shared-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm
$ rpm -ivh Percona-Server-client-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm
$ rpm -ivh Percona-Server-server-55-5.5.12-rel20.3.118.rhel5.i686.rpm

Otherwise, the dependencies won’t be met and the installation will fail.

Once installed, proceed to modify your configuration file - my.cnf - and recompile the plugins if necessary, as explained at the beginning of this guide.

As the schema of the grant table has changed, the server must be started without reading them:

$ /usr/sbin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables --user=mysql &

and use mysql_upgrade to migrate to the new grant tables, it will rebuild the indexes needed and do the modifications needed:

$ mysql_upgrade

After this is done, just restart the server as usual:

$ /sbin/service mysql restart

If it can’t find the pid file, kill the server and start it normally:

$ killall /usr/sbin/mysqld
$ /sbin/service mysql start