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 2.11.4, "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 2.11.1, "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 --all-databases --check-upgrade --auto-repairmysql < fix_priv_tablesmysqlcheck --all-databases --check-upgrade --fix-db-names --fix-table-names

Notes about the preceding commands:

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 2.5.1, "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 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. mysql_upgrade also supports the options for processing option files described at Section 4.2.3.4, "Command-Line Options that Affect Option-File Handling".

Table 4.3. 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.
--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.
--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).
--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	Show more information about the process	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-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.
--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.
--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.
--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 16.1.3.4, "Restrictions on Replication with GTIDs", for more information.