MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual :: 4 MySQL Programs :: 4.4 MySQL Installation-Related Programs :: 4.4.7 mysql_upgrade — Check and Upgrade MySQL Tables

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4.4 MySQL Installation-Related Programs
4.4.1 comp_err — Compile MySQL Error Message File
4.4.2 mysqlbug — Generate Bug Report
4.4.3 mysql_install_db — Initialize MySQL Data Directory
4.4.4 mysql_plugin — Configure MySQL Server Plugins
4.4.5 mysql_secure_installation — Improve MySQL Installation Security
4.4.6 mysql_tzinfo_to_sql — Load the Time Zone Tables
4.4.7 mysql_upgrade — Check and Upgrade MySQL Tables

4.4.7 mysql_upgrade — Check and Upgrade MySQL Tables

mysql_upgrade examines all tables in all databases for incompatibilities with the current version of MySQL Server. mysql_upgrade also upgrades the system tables so that you can take advantage of new privileges or capabilities that might have been added.

mysql_upgrade should be executed each time you upgrade MySQL.

If mysql_upgrade finds that a table has a possible incompatibility, it performs a table check and, if problems are found, attempts a table repair. If the table cannot be repaired, see Section 2.10.4, “Rebuilding or Repairing Tables or Indexes” for manual table repair strategies.

Note

On Windows Server 2008, Vista, and newer, you must run mysql_upgrade with administrator privileges. You can do this by running a Command Prompt as Administrator and running the command. Failure to do so may result in the upgrade failing to execute correctly.

Caution

You should always back up your current MySQL installation before performing an upgrade. See Section 7.2, “Database Backup Methods”.

Some upgrade incompatibilities may require special handling before you upgrade your MySQL installation and run mysql_upgrade. See Section 2.10.1, “Upgrading MySQL”, for instructions on determining whether any such incompatibilities apply to your installation and how to handle them.

To use mysql_upgrade, make sure that the server is running, and then invoke it like this:

shell> mysql_upgrade [options]

After running mysql_upgrade, stop the server and restart it so that any changes made to the system tables take effect.

mysql_upgrade executes the following commands to check and repair tables and to upgrade the system tables:

mysqlcheck --no-defaults --databases
 --fix-db-names --fix-table-names mysql
mysqlcheck --no-defaults --check-upgrade --databases
 --auto-repair mysql
mysql < fix_priv_tables
mysqlcheck --no-defaults --all-databases
 --skip-database=mysql --fix-db-names --fix-table-names
mysqlcheck --no-defaults --check-upgrade --all-databases
 --skip-database=mysql --auto-repair

Notes about the preceding commands:

mysql_upgrade also adds --write-binlog or --skip-write-binlog to the mysqlcheck commands, depending on whether the --write-binlog option was specified on the mysql_upgrade command.
Because mysql_upgrade invokes mysqlcheck with the --all-databases option, it processes all tables in all databases, which might take a long time to complete. Each table is locked and therefore unavailable to other sessions while it is being processed. Check and repair operations can be time-consuming, particularly for large tables.
For details about what checks the --check-upgrade option entails, see the description of the FOR UPGRADE option of the CHECK TABLE statement (see Section 13.7.2.2, “CHECK TABLE Syntax”).
fix_priv_tables represents a script generated internally by mysql_upgrade that contains SQL statements to upgrade the tables in the mysql database.

All checked and repaired tables are marked with the current MySQL version number. This ensures that next time you run mysql_upgrade with the same version of the server, it can tell whether there is any need to check or repair the table again.

mysql_upgrade also saves the MySQL version number in a file named mysql_upgrade_info in the data directory. This is used to quickly check whether all tables have been checked for this release so that table-checking can be skipped. To ignore this file and perform the check regardless, use the --force option.

If you install MySQL from RPM packages on Linux, you must install the server and client RPMs. mysql_upgrade is included in the server RPM but requires the client RPM because the latter includes mysqlcheck. (See Section 2.5.4, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using RPM Packages”.)

mysql_upgrade does not upgrade the contents of the help tables. For upgrade instructions, see Section 5.1.10, “Server-Side Help”.

mysql_upgrade runs by default as the MySQL root user. If the root password is expired when you run mysql_upgrade, you will see a message that your password is expired and that mysql_upgrade failed as a result. To correct this, reset the root password to unexpire it and run mysql_upgrade again:

shell> mysql -u root -p
Enter password: ****  <- enter root password here
mysql> SET PASSWORD = PASSWORD('root-password');
mysql> quit

shell> mysql_upgrade

mysql_upgrade supports the following options, which can be specified on the command line or in the [mysql_upgrade] and [client] groups of an option file. Other options are passed to mysqlcheck. For example, it might be necessary to specify the --password[=password] option. For information about option files, see Section 4.2.6, “Using Option Files”.

Table 4.4 mysql_upgrade Options

Format	Option File	Description	Introduced
--basedir	basedir	Not used; exists only for compatibility with some very old applications
--character-sets-dir=path	character-sets-dir	Directory where character sets are.
--compress	compress	Use compression in server/client protocol.
--datadir=path	datadir	Not used; exists only for compatibility with some very old applications
--debug[=#]	debug	If this is a non-debug version, catch error and exit.
--debug-check	debug-check	--debug-check Check memory and open file usage at exit.
--default-auth=plugin	default-auth=plugin	The authentication plugin to use	5.6.2
--default-character-set=name	default-character-set	Set the default character set.
--defaults-extra-file=file_name		Read option file in addition to the usual option files
--defaults-file=file_name		Read only the given option file
--defaults-group-suffix=str		Option group suffix value
--force	force	Force execution even if mysql_upgrade has already been executed for the current version of MySQL.
--help	help	Display a help message and exit
--host=name	host	Connect to host.
--no-defaults		Do not read any option files
--password[=name]	password	Password to use when connecting to server. If password is not given it's solicited on the tty.
--plugin-dir=path	plugin-dir=path	The directory where plugins are located	5.6.2
--port=#	port	Port number to use for connection or 0 for default to, in order of preference, my.cnf, $MYSQL_TCP_PORT, /etc/services, built-in default (3306).
--print-defaults		Print defaults
--protocol=name	protocol	The connection protocol (TCP=default, socket, pipe, memory)
--socket=name	socket	Socket file to use for connection.
--tmpdir=path	tmpdir	Directory for temporary files
--user=name	user	User for login if not current user.
--verbose	verbose	Show more information about the process
--version-check	version-check	Check for proper server version	5.6.12
--write-binlog	write-binlog	Enables binary logging of all commands including mysqlcheck.

--help
Display a short help message and exit.
--basedir=path
The path to the MySQL installation directory. This option is accepted for backward compatibility but ignored. It is removed in MySQL 5.7.
--datadir=path
The path to the data directory. This option is accepted for backward compatibility but ignored. It is removed in MySQL 5.7.
--debug=debug_options, -# debug_options
Write a debugging log. A typical debug_options string is d:t:O,file_name. The default is d:t:O,/tmp/mysql_upgrade.trace.
--debug-check
Print some debugging information when the program exits.
--debug-info, -T
Print debugging information and memory and CPU usage statistics when the program exits.
--default-auth=plugin
The client-side authentication plugin to use. See Section 6.3.7, “Pluggable Authentication”.
This option was added in MySQL 5.6.2.
--defaults-extra-file=file_name
Read this option file after the global option file but (on Unix) before the user option file. If the file does not exist or is otherwise inaccessible, an error occurs. file_name is interpreted relative to the current directory if given as a relative path name rather than a full path name.
--defaults-file=file_name
Use only the given option file. If the file does not exist or is otherwise inaccessible, an error occurs. file_name is interpreted relative to the current directory if given as a relative path name rather than a full path name.
--defaults-group-suffix=str
Read not only the usual option groups, but also groups with the usual names and a suffix of str. For example, mysql_upgrade normally reads the [client] and [mysql_upgrade] groups. If the --defaults-group-suffix=_other option is given, mysql_upgrade also reads the [client_other] and [mysql_upgrade_other] groups.
--force
Ignore the mysql_upgrade_info file and force execution of mysqlcheck even if mysql_upgrade has already been executed for the current version of MySQL.
--no-defaults
Do not read any option files. If program startup fails due to reading unknown options from an option file, --no-defaults can be used to prevent them from being read.
The exception is that the .mylogin.cnf file, if it exists, is read in all cases. This permits passwords to be specified in a safer way than on the command line even when --no-defaults is used. (.mylogin.cnf is created by the mysql_config_editor utility. See Section 4.6.6, “mysql_config_editor — MySQL Configuration Utility”.)
--plugin-dir=path
The directory in which to look for plugins. It may be necessary to specify this option if the --default-auth option is used to specify an authentication plugin but mysql_upgrade does not find it. See Section 6.3.7, “Pluggable Authentication”.
This option was added in MySQL 5.6.2.
--print-defaults
Print the program name and all options that it gets from option files.
--tmpdir=path, -t path
The path name of the directory to use for creating temporary files.
--upgrade-system-tables, -s
Upgrade only the system tables, do not upgrade data.
--user=user_name, -u user_name
The MySQL user name to use when connecting to the server. The default user name is root.
--verbose
Verbose mode. Print more information about what the program does.
--version-check, -k
Check the version of the server to which mysql_upgrade is connecting to verify that it is the same as the version for which mysql_upgrade was built. If not, mysql_upgrade exits. This option is enabled by default; to disable the check, use --skip-version-check. This option was added in MySQL 5.6.12.
--write-binlog
Cause binary logging to be enabled while mysql_upgrade runs. In MySQL 5.6.6 and earlier, this was the default behavior. (To disable binary logging during the upgrade, it was necessary to use the inverse of this option, by starting the program with --skip-write-binlog.) Beginning with MySQL 5.6.7, binary logging by mysql_upgrade is disabled by default (Bug #14221043), and you must invoke the program explicitly with --write-binlog if you want its actions to be written to the binary log. (Also beginning with MySQL 5.6.7, the --skip-write-binlog option effectively does nothing.)
Running mysql_upgrade is not recommended with a MySQL Server that is running with global transaction identifiers enabled (Bug #13833710). This is because enabling GTIDs means that any updates which mysql_upgrade might need to perform on system tables using a nontransactional storage engine such as MyISAM to fail. See Section 17.1.3.4, “Restrictions on Replication with GTIDs”, for more information.

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User Comments

Posted by Kristian Koehntopp on March 27 2008 2:29pm

[Delete] [Edit]

Be careful when you have multiple instances of mysqld running on the same box.

mysql_upgrade reads the sections [mysql_upgrade] and [client] for default values. The values required for an update, notably datadir and friends, are in [mysqld], though. Thus, it will touch the default datadir in /var/lib/mysql as it will not see your special datadir.

You cannot copy my.cnf and rename [mysqld] to [mysql_upgrade], because mysql_upgrade chokes on all the mysqld options. Instead filter the options you need like this:

( echo '[mysql_upgrade]';
$PATHTO/my_print_defaults
--defaults-file=$PATHTO/my.cnf mysqld |
egrep '(datadir|basedir|user|password|socket)' |
sed -e 's/^--//';
) >> $PATHTO/my.cnf

Now mysqld_upgrade will find the information necessary to run properly. Check with

mysql_upgrade --defaults-file=$PATHTO/my.cnf --print-defaults

then run with

mysql_upgrade --defaults-file=$PATHTO/my.cnf -v

Posted by Michelle Steel on November 4 2008 2:25pm

[Delete] [Edit]

If you are running multiple instances of MySQL, then you need to use the port number or socket name in the options list otherwise mysqlcheck will just check the default data directory.

E.g. if you have three instances of MySQL on port 3306, 3307 and 3308, you would need to run mysql_upgrade three times:

shell>mysql_upgrade -P3306 [options]
shell>mysql_upgrade -P3307 [options]
shell>mysql_upgrade -P3308 [options]

Posted by Frank Jonas on May 27 2010 6:19am

[Delete] [Edit]

In Addition to the post above I want to add the a explanation which I got from the MySQL-support:

--------------------------------
Sure, you can run something similar to the follows:
shell> mysql_upgrade -h 127.0.0.1 --port=3308

Please note that is very important to specify -h if you use the port number, or mysql_upgrade will try to connect using the UNIX socket, de facto ignoring the port number.

Or else:
shell> mysql_upgrade -S /path/to/socket
--------------------------------

Posted by Juri Sinitson on June 10 2013 9:53am

[Delete] [Edit]

You may become login-errors when executing mysql_upgrade. In this case supply the login-data to mysql_upgrade like this:

shell> mysql_upgrade -u root -p

You may also need to stop the mysql daemon before executing mysql_upgrade and start it again when mysql_upgrade has completed.

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