Known Issues in MariaDB
This section lists known issues in recent versions of MySQL.
For information about platform-specific issues, see the installation and porting instructions in , "General Installation Guidance", and MySQL Internals: Porting.
The following problems are known:
- Subquery optimization for
INis not as effective as for=. - Even if you use
lower_case_table_names=2(which enables MariaDB to remember the case used for databases and table names), MariaDB does not remember the case used for database names for the functionDATABASE()or within the various logs (on case-insensitive systems). - Dropping a
FOREIGN KEYconstraint does not work in replication because the constraint may have another name on the slave. REPLACE(andLOAD DATAwith theREPLACEoption) does not triggerON DELETE CASCADE.DISTINCTwithORDER BYdoes not work insideGROUP_CONCAT()if you don't use all and only those columns that are in theDISTINCTlist.- If one user has a long-running transaction and another user drops a table that is updated in the transaction, there is small chance that the binary log may contain the
DROP TABLEstatement before the table is used in the transaction itself. We plan to fix this by having theDROP TABLEstatement wait until the table is not being used in any transaction. - When inserting a big integer value (between 263 and 264-1) into a decimal or string column, it is inserted as a negative value because the number is evaluated in a signed integer context.
FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCKdoes not blockCOMMITif the server is running without binary logging, which may cause a problem (of consistency between tables) when doing a full backup.ANALYZE TABLE,OPTIMIZE TABLE, andREPAIR TABLEmay cause problems on nontransactional tables for which you are usingINSERT DELAYED.- Performing
LOCK TABLE ...andFLUSH TABLES ...does not guarantee that there isn't a half-finished transaction in progress on the table. - Replication uses query-level logging: The master writes the executed queries to the binary log. This is a very fast, compact, and efficient logging method that works perfectly in most cases.
It is possible for the data on the master and slave to become different if a query is designed in such a way that the data modification is nondeterministic (generally not a recommended practice, even outside of replication).
For example:
CREATE TABLE ... SELECTorINSERT ... SELECTstatements that insert zero orNULLvalues into anAUTO_INCREMENTcolumn.DELETEif you are deleting rows from a table that has foreign keys withON DELETE CASCADEproperties.REPLACE ... SELECT,INSERT IGNORE ... SELECTif you have duplicate key values in the inserted data.
If and only if the preceding queries have no
ORDER BYclause guaranteeing a deterministic order.For example, for
INSERT ... SELECTwith noORDER BY, theSELECTmay return rows in a different order (which results in a row having different ranks, hence getting a different number in theAUTO_INCREMENTcolumn), depending on the choices made by the optimizers on the master and slave.A query is optimized differently on the master and slave only if:
- The table is stored using a different storage engine on the master than on the slave. (It is possible to use different storage engines on the master and slave. For example, you can use
InnoDBon the master, butMyISAMon the slave if the slave has less available disk space.) - MySQL buffer sizes (
key_buffer_size, and so on) are different on the master and slave. - The master and slave run different MariaDB versions, and the optimizer code differs between these versions.
This problem may also affect database restoration using mysqlbinlog|mysql.
The easiest way to avoid this problem is to add an
ORDER BYclause to the aforementioned nondeterministic queries to ensure that the rows are always stored or modified in the same order.
The following issues are known and will be fixed in due time:
- Log file names are based on the server host name (if you don't specify a file name with the startup option). You have to use options such as
--log-bin=if you change your host name to something else. Another option is to rename the old files to reflect your host name change (if these are binary logs, you need to edit the binary log index file and fix the binary log file names there as well). See , "Server Command Options".old_host_name-bin - mysqlbinlog does not delete temporary files left after a
LOAD DATA INFILEstatement. See , "mysqlbinlog - Utility for Processing Binary Log Files". RENAMEdoes not work withTEMPORARYtables or tables used in aMERGEtable.- Due to the way table format (
.frm) files are stored, you cannot use character 255 (CHAR(255)) in table names, column names, or enumerations. - When using
SET CHARACTER SET, you can't use translated characters in database, table, and column names. - You can't use "
_" or "%" withESCAPEinLIKE ... ESCAPE. BLOBandTEXTvalues can't reliably be used inGROUP BY,ORDER BYorDISTINCT. Only the firstmax_sort_lengthbytes are used when comparingBLOBvalues in these cases. The default value ofmax_sort_lengthis 1024 and can be changed at server startup time or at runtime.- Numeric calculations are done with
BIGINTorDOUBLE(both are normally 64 bits long). Which precision you get depends on the function. The general rule is that bit functions are performed withBIGINTprecision,IF()andELT()withBIGINTorDOUBLEprecision, and the rest withDOUBLEprecision. You should try to avoid using unsigned long long values if they resolve to be larger than 63 bits (9223372036854775807) for anything other than bit fields. - You can have up to 255
ENUMandSETcolumns in one table. - In
MIN(),MAX(), and other aggregate functions, MariaDB currently comparesENUMandSETcolumns by their string value rather than by the string's relative position in the set. - mysqld-safe redirects all messages from mysqld to the mysqld log. One problem with this is that if you execute mysqladmin refresh to close and reopen the log,
stdoutandstderrare still redirected to the old log. If you use the general query log extensively, you should edit mysqld_safe to log toinstead ofhost_name.errso that you can easily reclaim the space for the old log by deleting it and executing mysqladmin refresh.host_name.log - In an
UPDATEstatement, columns are updated from left to right. If you refer to an updated column, you get the updated value instead of the original value. For example, the following statement incrementsKEYby2, not1:mysql>
UPDATEtbl_nameSET KEY=KEY+1,KEY=KEY+1; - You can refer to multiple temporary tables in the same query, but you cannot refer to any given temporary table more than once. For example, the following does not work:
mysql>
SELECT * FROM temp_table, temp_table AS t2;ERROR 1137: Can't reopen table: 'temp_table' - The optimizer may handle
DISTINCTdifferently when you are using "hidden" columns in a join than when you are not. In a join, hidden columns are counted as part of the result (even if they are not shown), whereas in normal queries, hidden columns don't participate in theDISTINCTcomparison. We will probably change this in the future to never compare the hidden columns when executingDISTINCT.An example of this is:
SELECT DISTINCT mp3id FROM band_downloads WHERE userid = 9 ORDER BY id DESC;
and
SELECT DISTINCT band_downloads.mp3id FROM band_downloads,band_mp3 WHERE band_downloads.userid = 9 AND band_mp3.id = band_downloads.mp3id ORDER BY band_downloads.id DESC;
In the second case, using MariaDB Server 3.23.x, you may get two identical rows in the result set (because the values in the hidden
idcolumn may differ).Note that this happens only for queries where that do not have the
ORDER BYcolumns in the result. - If you execute a
PROCEDUREon a query that returns an empty set, in some cases thePROCEDUREdoes not transform the columns. - Creation of a table of type
MERGEdoes not check whether the underlying tables are compatible types. - If you use
ALTER TABLEto add aUNIQUEindex to a table used in aMERGEtable and then add a normal index on theMERGEtable, the key order is different for the tables if there was an old, non-UNIQUEkey in the table. This is becauseALTER TABLEputsUNIQUEindexes before normal indexes to be able to detect duplicate keys as early as possible.