Appendix B Error Messages and Common Problems

An Access denied error can have many causes. Often the problem is related to the MySQL accounts that the server permits client programs to use when connecting. See Section 6.2, “Access Control and Account Management”, and Section 6.2.21, “Troubleshooting Problems Connecting to MySQL”.

A MySQL client on Unix can connect to the mysqld server in two different ways: By using a Unix socket file to connect through a file in the file system (default /tmp/mysql.sock), or by using TCP/IP, which connects through a port number. A Unix socket file connection is faster than TCP/IP, but can be used only when connecting to a server on the same computer. A Unix socket file is used if you do not specify a host name or if you specify the special host name localhost.

If the MySQL server is running on Windows, you can connect using TCP/IP. If the server is started with the named_pipe system variable enabled, you can also connect with named pipes if you run the client on the host where the server is running. The name of the named pipe is MySQL by default. If you do not give a host name when connecting to mysqld, a MySQL client first tries to connect to the named pipe. If that does not work, it connects to the TCP/IP port. You can force the use of named pipes on Windows by using . as the host name.

The error (2002) Can't connect to ... normally means that there is no MySQL server running on the system or that you are using an incorrect Unix socket file name or TCP/IP port number when trying to connect to the server. You should also check that the TCP/IP port you are using has not been blocked by a firewall or port blocking service.

The error (2003) Can't connect to MySQL server on 'server' (10061) indicates that the network connection has been refused. You should check that there is a MySQL server running, that it has network connections enabled, and that the network port you specified is the one configured on the server.

Start by checking whether there is a process named mysqld running on your server host. (Use ps xa | grep mysqld on Unix or the Task Manager on Windows.) If there is no such process, you should start the server. See Section 2.10.2, “Starting the Server”.

If a mysqld process is running, you can check it by trying the following commands. The port number or Unix socket file name might be different in your setup. host_ip represents the IP address of the machine where the server is running.

shell> mysqladmin version
shell> mysqladmin variables
shell> mysqladmin -h `hostname` version variables
shell> mysqladmin -h `hostname` --port=3306 version
shell> mysqladmin -h host_ip version
shell> mysqladmin --protocol=SOCKET --socket=/tmp/mysql.sock version

Note the use of backticks rather than forward quotation marks with the hostname command; these cause the output of hostname (that is, the current host name) to be substituted into the mysqladmin command. If you have no hostname command or are running on Windows, you can manually type the host name of your machine (without backticks) following the -h option. You can also try -h 127.0.0.1 to connect with TCP/IP to the local host.

Make sure that the server has not been configured to ignore network connections or (if you are attempting to connect remotely) that it has not been configured to listen only locally on its network interfaces. If the server was started with the skip_networking system variable enabled, it cannot accept TCP/IP connections at all. If the server was started with the bind_address system variable set to 127.0.0.1, it listens for TCP/IP connections only locally on the loopback interface and does not accept remote connections.

Check to make sure that there is no firewall blocking access to MySQL. Your firewall may be configured on the basis of the application being executed, or the port number used by MySQL for communication (3306 by default). Under Linux or Unix, check your IP tables (or similar) configuration to ensure that the port has not been blocked. Under Windows, applications such as ZoneAlarm or Windows Firewall may need to be configured not to block the MySQL port.

Here are some reasons the Can't connect to local MySQL server error might occur:

If you get the error message Can't connect to MySQL server on some_host, you can try the following things to find out what the problem is:

There are three likely causes for this error message.

Usually it indicates network connectivity trouble and you should check the condition of your network if this error occurs frequently. If the error message includes “during query,” this is probably the case you are experiencing.

Sometimes the “during query” form happens when millions of rows are being sent as part of one or more queries. If you know that this is happening, you should try increasing net_read_timeout from its default of 30 seconds to 60 seconds or longer, sufficient for the data transfer to complete.

More rarely, it can happen when the client is attempting the initial connection to the server. In this case, if your connect_timeout value is set to only a few seconds, you may be able to resolve the problem by increasing it to ten seconds, perhaps more if you have a very long distance or slow connection. You can determine whether you are experiencing this more uncommon cause by using SHOW GLOBAL STATUS LIKE 'Aborted_connects'. It increases by one for each initial connection attempt that the server aborts. You may see “reading authorization packet” as part of the error message; if so, that also suggests that this is the solution that you need.

If the cause is none of those just described, you may be experiencing a problem with BLOB values that are larger than max_allowed_packet, which can cause this error with some clients. Sometime you may see an ER_NET_PACKET_TOO_LARGE error, and that confirms that you need to increase max_allowed_packet.

MySQL client programs prompt for a password when invoked with a --password or -p option that has no following password value:

shell> mysql -u user_name -p
Enter password:

On some systems, you may find that your password works when specified in an option file or on the command line, but not when you enter it interactively at the Enter password: prompt. This occurs when the library provided by the system to read passwords limits password values to a small number of characters (typically eight). That is a problem with the system library, not with MySQL. To work around it, change your MySQL password to a value that is eight or fewer characters long, or put your password in an option file.

If clients encounter Too many connections errors when attempting to connect to the mysqld server, all available connections are in use by other clients.

The permitted number of connections is controlled by the max_connections system variable. To support more connections, set max_connections to a larger value.

mysqld actually permits max_connections + 1 client connections. The extra connection is reserved for use by accounts that have the CONNECTION_ADMIN privilege (or the deprecated SUPER privilege). By granting the privilege to administrators and not to normal users (who should not need it), an administrator can connect to the server and use SHOW PROCESSLIST to diagnose problems even if the maximum number of unprivileged clients are connected. See Section 13.7.7.29, “SHOW PROCESSLIST Statement”.

The server also permits administrative connections on a dedicated interface. For more information about how the server handles client connections, see Section 5.1.12.1, “Connection Interfaces”.

If you issue a query using the mysql client program and receive an error like the following one, it means that mysql does not have enough memory to store the entire query result:

mysql: Out of memory at line 42, 'malloc.c'
mysql: needed 8136 byte (8k), memory in use: 12481367 bytes (12189k)
ERROR 2008: MySQL client ran out of memory

To remedy the problem, first check whether your query is correct. Is it reasonable that it should return so many rows? If not, correct the query and try again. Otherwise, you can invoke mysql with the --quick option. This causes it to use the mysql_use_result() C API function to retrieve the result set, which places less of a load on the client (but more on the server).

This section also covers the related Lost connection to server during query error.

The most common reason for the MySQL server has gone away error is that the server timed out and closed the connection. In this case, you normally get one of the following error codes (which one you get is operating system-dependent).

By default, the server closes the connection after eight hours if nothing has happened. You can change the time limit by setting the wait_timeout variable when you start mysqld. See Section 5.1.8, “Server System Variables”.

If you have a script, you just have to issue the query again for the client to do an automatic reconnection. This assumes that you have automatic reconnection in the client enabled (which is the default for the mysql command-line client).

Some other common reasons for the MySQL server has gone away error are:

You can check whether the MySQL server died and restarted by executing mysqladmin version and examining the server's uptime. If the client connection was broken because mysqld crashed and restarted, you should concentrate on finding the reason for the crash. Start by checking whether issuing the query again kills the server again. See Section B.3.3.3, “What to Do If MySQL Keeps Crashing”.

You can obtain more information about lost connections by starting mysqld with the log_error_verbosity system variable set to 3. This logs some of the disconnection messages in the hostname.err file. See Section 5.4.2, “The Error Log”.

If you want to create a bug report regarding this problem, be sure that you include the following information:

See also Section B.3.2.9, “Communication Errors and Aborted Connections”, and Section 1.6, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”.

A communication packet is a single SQL statement sent to the MySQL server, a single row that is sent to the client, or a binary log event sent from a source replication server to a replica.

The largest possible packet that can be transmitted to or from a MySQL 8.0 server or client is 1GB.

When a MySQL client or the mysqld server receives a packet bigger than max_allowed_packet bytes, it issues an ER_NET_PACKET_TOO_LARGE error and closes the connection. With some clients, you may also get a Lost connection to MySQL server during query error if the communication packet is too large.

Both the client and the server have their own max_allowed_packet variable, so if you want to handle big packets, you must increase this variable both in the client and in the server.

If you are using the mysql client program, its default max_allowed_packet variable is 16MB. To set a larger value, start mysql like this:

shell> mysql --max_allowed_packet=32M

That sets the packet size to 32MB.

The server's default max_allowed_packet value is 64MB. You can increase this if the server needs to handle big queries (for example, if you are working with big BLOB columns). For example, to set the variable to 128MB, start the server like this:

shell> mysqld --max_allowed_packet=128M

You can also use an option file to set max_allowed_packet. For example, to set the size for the server to 128MB, add the following lines in an option file:

[mysqld]
max_allowed_packet=128M

It is safe to increase the value of this variable because the extra memory is allocated only when needed. For example, mysqld allocates more memory only when you issue a long query or when mysqld must return a large result row. The small default value of the variable is a precaution to catch incorrect packets between the client and server and also to ensure that you do not run out of memory by using large packets accidentally.

You can also get strange problems with large packets if you are using large BLOB values but have not given mysqld access to enough memory to handle the query. If you suspect this is the case, try adding ulimit -d 256000 to the beginning of the mysqld_safe script and restarting mysqld.

If connection problems occur such as communication errors or aborted connections, use these sources of information to diagnose problems:

If the log_error_verbosity system variable is set to 3, you might find messages like this in your error log:

[Note] Aborted connection 854 to db: 'employees' user: 'josh'

If a client is unable even to connect, the server increments the Aborted_connects status variable. Unsuccessful connection attempts can occur for the following reasons:

If these kinds of things happen, it might indicate that someone is trying to break into your server! If the general query log is enabled, messages for these types of problems are logged to it.

If a client successfully connects but later disconnects improperly or is terminated, the server increments the Aborted_clients status variable, and logs an Aborted connection message to the error log. The cause can be any of the following:

Other reasons for problems with aborted connections or aborted clients:

See also Section B.3.2.7, “MySQL server has gone away”.

If a table-full error occurs, it may be that the disk is full or that the table has reached its maximum size. The effective maximum table size for MySQL databases is usually determined by operating system constraints on file sizes, not by MySQL internal limits. See Section 8.4.6, “Limits on Table Size”.

If you get an error of the following type for some queries, it means that MySQL cannot create a temporary file for the result set in the temporary directory:

Can't create/write to file '\\sqla3fe_0.ism'.

The preceding error is a typical message for Windows; the Unix message is similar.

One fix is to start mysqld with the --tmpdir option or to add the option to the [mysqld] section of your option file. For example, to specify a directory of C:\temp, use these lines:

[mysqld]
tmpdir=C:/temp

The C:\temp directory must exist and have sufficient space for the MySQL server to write to. See Section 4.2.2.2, “Using Option Files”.

Another cause of this error can be permissions issues. Make sure that the MySQL server can write to the tmpdir directory.

Check also the error code that you get with perror. One reason the server cannot write to a table is that the file system is full:

shell> perror 28
OS error code  28:  No space left on device

If you get an error of the following type during startup, it indicates that the file system or directory used for storing data files is write protected. Provided that the write error is to a test file, the error is not serious and can be safely ignored.

Can't create test file /usr/local/mysql/data/master.lower-test

If you get Commands out of sync; you can't run this command now in your client code, you are calling client functions in the wrong order.

This can happen, for example, if you are using mysql_use_result() and try to execute a new query before you have called mysql_free_result(). It can also happen if you try to execute two queries that return data without calling mysql_use_result() or mysql_store_result() in between.

If you get the following error, it means that when mysqld was started or when it reloaded the grant tables, it found an account in the user table that had an invalid password.

Found wrong password for user 'some_user'@'some_host'; ignoring user

As a result, the account is simply ignored by the permission system. To fix this problem, assign a new, valid password to the account.

If you get either of the following errors, it usually means that no table exists in the default database with the given name:

Table 'tbl_name' doesn't exist
Can't find file: 'tbl_name' (errno: 2)

In some cases, it may be that the table does exist but that you are referring to it incorrectly:

You can check which tables are in the default database with SHOW TABLES. See Section 13.7.7, “SHOW Statements”.

You might see an error like this if you have character set problems:

MySQL Connection Failed: Can't initialize character set charset_name

This error can have any of the following causes:

If you get ERROR 'file_name' not found (errno: 23), Can't open file: file_name (errno: 24), or any other error with errno 23 or errno 24 from MySQL, it means that you have not allocated enough file descriptors for the MySQL server. You can use the perror utility to get a description of what the error number means:

shell> perror 23
OS error code  23:  File table overflow
shell> perror 24
OS error code  24:  Too many open files
shell> perror 11
OS error code  11:  Resource temporarily unavailable

The problem here is that mysqld is trying to keep open too many files simultaneously. You can either tell mysqld not to open so many files at once or increase the number of file descriptors available to mysqld.

To tell mysqld to keep open fewer files at a time, you can make the table cache smaller by reducing the value of the table_open_cache system variable (the default value is 64). This may not entirely prevent running out of file descriptors because in some circumstances the server may attempt to extend the cache size temporarily, as described in Section 8.4.3.1, “How MySQL Opens and Closes Tables”. Reducing the value of max_connections also reduces the number of open files (the default value is 100).

To change the number of file descriptors available to mysqld, you can use the --open-files-limit option to mysqld_safe or set the open_files_limit system variable. See Section 5.1.8, “Server System Variables”. The easiest way to set these values is to add an option to your option file. See Section 4.2.2.2, “Using Option Files”. If you have an old version of mysqld that does not support setting the open files limit, you can edit the mysqld_safe script. There is a commented-out line ulimit -n 256 in the script. You can remove the # character to uncomment this line, and change the number 256 to set the number of file descriptors to be made available to mysqld.

--open-files-limit and ulimit can increase the number of file descriptors, but only up to the limit imposed by the operating system. There is also a “hard” limit that can be overridden only if you start mysqld_safe or mysqld as root (just remember that you also need to start the server with the --user option in this case so that it does not continue to run as root after it starts up). If you need to increase the operating system limit on the number of file descriptors available to each process, consult the documentation for your system.

If you have started mysqld with the myisam_recover_options system variable set, MySQL automatically checks and tries to repair MyISAM tables if they are marked as 'not closed properly' or 'crashed'. If this happens, MySQL writes an entry in the hostname.err file 'Warning: Checking table ...' which is followed by Warning: Repairing table if the table needs to be repaired. If you get a lot of these errors, without mysqld having died unexpectedly just before, then something is wrong and needs to be investigated further.

When the server detects MyISAM table corruption, it writes additional information to the error log, such as the name and line number of the source file, and the list of threads accessing the table. Example: Got an error from thread_id=1, mi_dynrec.c:368. This is useful information to include in bug reports.

See also Section 5.1.7, “Server Command Options”, and Section 5.9.1.7, “Making a Test Case If You Experience Table Corruption”.

If you have problems with file permissions, the UMASK or UMASK_DIR environment variable might be set incorrectly when mysqld starts. For example, mysqld might issue the following error message when you create a table:

ERROR: Can't find file: 'path/with/file_name' (Errcode: 13)

The default UMASK and UMASK_DIR values are 0640 and 0750, respectively. mysqld assumes that the value for UMASK or UMASK_DIR is in octal if it starts with a zero. For example, setting UMASK=0600 is equivalent to UMASK=384 because 0600 octal is 384 decimal.

Assuming that you start mysqld using mysqld_safe, change the default UMASK value as follows:

UMASK=384  # = 600 in octal
export UMASK
mysqld_safe &

By default, mysqld creates database directories with an access permission value of 0750. To modify this behavior, set the UMASK_DIR variable. If you set its value, new directories are created with the combined UMASK and UMASK_DIR values. For example, to give group access to all new directories, start mysqld_safe as follows:

UMASK_DIR=504  # = 770 in octal
export UMASK_DIR
mysqld_safe &

For additional details, see Section 4.9, “Environment Variables”.

If you have never assigned a root password for MySQL, the server does not require a password at all for connecting as root. However, this is insecure. For instructions on assigning a password, see Section 2.10.4, “Securing the Initial MySQL Account”.

If you know the root password and want to change it, see Section 13.7.1.1, “ALTER USER Statement”, and Section 13.7.1.10, “SET PASSWORD Statement”.

If you assigned a root password previously but have forgotten it, you can assign a new password. The following sections provide instructions for Windows and Unix and Unix-like systems, as well as generic instructions that apply to any system.

Each MySQL version is tested on many platforms before it is released. This does not mean that there are no bugs in MySQL, but if there are bugs, they should be very few and can be hard to find. If you have a problem, it always helps if you try to find out exactly what crashes your system, because you have a much better chance of getting the problem fixed quickly.

First, you should try to find out whether the problem is that the mysqld server dies or whether your problem has to do with your client. You can check how long your mysqld server has been up by executing mysqladmin version. If mysqld has died and restarted, you may find the reason by looking in the server's error log. See Section 5.4.2, “The Error Log”.

On some systems, you can find in the error log a stack trace of where mysqld died. Note that the variable values written in the error log may not always be 100% correct.

Many unexpected server exits are caused by corrupted data files or index files. MySQL updates the files on disk with the write() system call after every SQL statement and before the client is notified about the result. (This is not true if you are running with the delay_key_write system variable enabled, in which case data files are written but not index files.) This means that data file contents are safe even if mysqld crashes, because the operating system ensures that the unflushed data is written to disk. You can force MySQL to flush everything to disk after every SQL statement by starting mysqld with the --flush option.

The preceding means that normally you should not get corrupted tables unless one of the following happens:

Because it is very difficult to know why something is crashing, first try to check whether things that work for others result in an unexpected exit for you. Try the following things:

This section describes how MySQL responds to disk-full errors (such as “no space left on device”), and to quota-exceeded errors (such as “write failed” or “user block limit reached”).

This section is relevant for writes to MyISAM tables. It also applies for writes to binary log files and binary log index file, except that references to “row” and “record” should be understood to mean “event.”

When a disk-full condition occurs, MySQL does the following:

To alleviate the problem, take the following actions:

Exceptions to the preceding behavior are when you use REPAIR TABLE or OPTIMIZE TABLE or when the indexes are created in a batch after LOAD DATA or after an ALTER TABLE statement. All of these statements may create large temporary files that, if left to themselves, would cause big problems for the rest of the system. If the disk becomes full while MySQL is doing any of these operations, it removes the big temporary files and mark the table as crashed. The exception is that for ALTER TABLE, the old table is left unchanged.

On Unix, MySQL uses the value of the TMPDIR environment variable as the path name of the directory in which to store temporary files. If TMPDIR is not set, MySQL uses the system default, which is usually /tmp, /var/tmp, or /usr/tmp.

On Windows, MySQL checks in order the values of the TMPDIR, TEMP, and TMP environment variables. For the first one found to be set, MySQL uses it and does not check those remaining. If none of TMPDIR, TEMP, or TMP are set, MySQL uses the Windows system default, which is usually C:\windows\temp\.

If the file system containing your temporary file directory is too small, you can use the mysqld --tmpdir option to specify a directory in a file system where you have enough space.

The --tmpdir option can be set to a list of several paths that are used in round-robin fashion. Paths should be separated by colon characters (:) on Unix and semicolon characters (;) on Windows.

If the MySQL server is acting as a replica, you can set the slave_load_tmpdir system variable to specify a separate directory for holding temporary files when replicating LOAD DATA statements. This directory should be in a disk-based file system (not a memory-based file system) so that the temporary files used to replicate LOAD DATA can survive machine restarts. The directory also should not be one that is cleared by the operating system during the system startup process. However, replication can now continue after a restart if the temporary files have been removed.

MySQL arranges that temporary files are removed if mysqld is terminated. On platforms that support it (such as Unix), this is done by unlinking the file after opening it. The disadvantage of this is that the name does not appear in directory listings and you do not see a big temporary file that fills up the file system in which the temporary file directory is located. (In such cases, lsof +L1 may be helpful in identifying large files associated with mysqld.)

When sorting (ORDER BY or GROUP BY), MySQL normally uses one or two temporary files. The maximum disk space required is determined by the following expression:

(length of what is sorted + sizeof(row pointer))
* number of matched rows
* 2

The row pointer size is usually four bytes, but may grow in the future for really big tables.

For some statements, MySQL creates temporary SQL tables that are not hidden and have names that begin with #sql.

Some SELECT queries creates temporary SQL tables to hold intermediate results.

DDL operations that rebuild the table and are not performed online using the ALGORITHM=INPLACE technique create a temporary copy of the original table in the same directory as the original table.

Online DDL operations may use temporary log files for recording concurrent DML, temporary sort files when creating an index, and temporary intermediate tables files when rebuilding the table. For more information, see Section 15.12.3, “Online DDL Space Requirements”.

InnoDB user-created temporary tables and on-disk internal temporary tables are created in a temporary tablespace file named ibtmp1 in the MySQL data directory. For more information, see Section 15.6.3.5, “Temporary Tablespaces”.

See also Section 15.15.7, “InnoDB INFORMATION_SCHEMA Temporary Table Info Table”.

The optional EXTENDED modifier causes SHOW TABLES to list hidden tables created by failed ALTER TABLE statements. See Section 13.7.7.39, “SHOW TABLES Statement”.

The default location for the Unix socket file that the server uses for communication with local clients is /tmp/mysql.sock. (For some distribution formats, the directory might be different, such as /var/lib/mysql for RPMs.)

On some versions of Unix, anyone can delete files in the /tmp directory or other similar directories used for temporary files. If the socket file is located in such a directory on your system, this might cause problems.

On most versions of Unix, you can protect your /tmp directory so that files can be deleted only by their owners or the superuser (root). To do this, set the sticky bit on the /tmp directory by logging in as root and using the following command:

shell> chmod +t /tmp

You can check whether the sticky bit is set by executing ls -ld /tmp. If the last permission character is t, the bit is set.

Another approach is to change the place where the server creates the Unix socket file. If you do this, you should also let client programs know the new location of the file. You can specify the file location in several ways:

You can test whether the new socket location works by attempting to connect to the server with this command:

shell> mysqladmin --socket=/path/to/socket version

If you have a problem with SELECT NOW() returning values in UTC and not your local time, you have to tell the server your current time zone. The same applies if UNIX_TIMESTAMP() returns the wrong value. This should be done for the environment in which the server runs (for example, in mysqld_safe or mysql.server). See Section 4.9, “Environment Variables”.

You can set the time zone for the server with the --timezone=timezone_name option to mysqld_safe. You can also set it by setting the TZ environment variable before you start mysqld.

The permissible values for --timezone or TZ are system dependent. Consult your operating system documentation to see what values are acceptable.

For nonbinary strings (CHAR, VARCHAR, TEXT), string searches use the collation of the comparison operands. For binary strings (BINARY, VARBINARY, BLOB), comparisons use the numeric values of the bytes in the operands; this means that for alphabetic characters, comparisons are case-sensitive.

A comparison between a nonbinary string and binary string is treated as a comparison of binary strings.

Simple comparison operations (>=, >, =, <, <=, sorting, and grouping) are based on each character's “sort value.” Characters with the same sort value are treated as the same character. For example, if e and é have the same sort value in a given collation, they compare as equal.

The default character set and collation are utf8mb4 and utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci, so nonbinary string comparisons are case-insensitive by default. This means that if you search with col_name LIKE 'a%', you get all column values that start with A or a. To make this search case-sensitive, make sure that one of the operands has a case-sensitive or binary collation. For example, if you are comparing a column and a string that both have the utf8mb4 character set, you can use the COLLATE operator to cause either operand to have the utf8mb4_0900_as_cs or utf8mb4_bin collation:

col_name COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs LIKE 'a%'
col_name LIKE 'a%' COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_as_cs
col_name COLLATE utf8mb4_bin LIKE 'a%'
col_name LIKE 'a%' COLLATE utf8mb4_bin

If you want a column always to be treated in case-sensitive fashion, declare it with a case-sensitive or binary collation. See Section 13.1.20, “CREATE TABLE Statement”.

To cause a case-sensitive comparison of nonbinary strings to be case-insensitive, use COLLATE to name a case-insensitive collation. The strings in the following example normally are case-sensitive, but COLLATE changes the comparison to be case-insensitive:

mysql> SET NAMES 'utf8mb4';
mysql> SET @s1 = 'MySQL' COLLATE utf8mb4_bin,
           @s2 = 'mysql' COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
mysql> SELECT @s1 = @s2;
+-----------+
| @s1 = @s2 |
+-----------+
|         0 |
+-----------+
mysql> SELECT @s1 COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci = @s2;
+--------------------------------------+
| @s1 COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci = @s2 |
+--------------------------------------+
|                                    1 |
+--------------------------------------+

A binary string is case-sensitive in comparisons. To compare the string as case-insensitive, convert it to a nonbinary string and use COLLATE to name a case-insensitive collation:

mysql> SET @s = BINARY 'MySQL';
mysql> SELECT @s = 'mysql';
+--------------+
| @s = 'mysql' |
+--------------+
|            0 |
+--------------+
mysql> SELECT CONVERT(@s USING utf8mb4) COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci = 'mysql';
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| CONVERT(@s USING utf8mb4) COLLATE utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci = 'mysql' |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                              1 |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

To determine whether a value is compared as a nonbinary or binary string, use the COLLATION() function. This example shows that VERSION() returns a string that has a case-insensitive collation, so comparisons are case-insensitive:

mysql> SELECT COLLATION(VERSION());
+----------------------+
| COLLATION(VERSION()) |
+----------------------+
| utf8_general_ci      |
+----------------------+

For binary strings, the collation value is binary, so comparisons are case sensitive. One context in which you can expect to see binary is for compression functions, which return binary strings as a general rule: string:

mysql> SELECT COLLATION(COMPRESS('x'));
+--------------------------+
| COLLATION(COMPRESS('x')) |
+--------------------------+
| binary                   |
+--------------------------+

To check the sort value of a string, the WEIGHT_STRING() may be helpful. See Section 12.8, “String Functions and Operators”.

The format of a DATE value is 'YYYY-MM-DD'. According to standard SQL, no other format is permitted. You should use this format in UPDATE expressions and in the WHERE clause of SELECT statements. For example:

SELECT * FROM t1 WHERE date >= '2003-05-05';

As a convenience, MySQL automatically converts a date to a number if the date is used in numeric context and vice versa. MySQL also permits a “relaxed” string format when updating and in a WHERE clause that compares a date to a DATE, DATETIME, or TIMESTAMP column. “Relaxed” format means that any punctuation character may be used as the separator between parts. For example, '2004-08-15' and '2004#08#15' are equivalent. MySQL can also convert a string containing no separators (such as '20040815'), provided it makes sense as a date.

When you compare a DATE, TIME, DATETIME, or TIMESTAMP to a constant string with the <, <=, =, >=, >, or BETWEEN operators, MySQL normally converts the string to an internal long integer for faster comparison (and also for a bit more “relaxed” string checking). However, this conversion is subject to the following exceptions:

For those exceptions, the comparison is done by converting the objects to strings and performing a string comparison.

To be on the safe side, assume that strings are compared as strings and use the appropriate string functions if you want to compare a temporal value to a string.

The special “zero” date '0000-00-00' can be stored and retrieved as '0000-00-00'. When a '0000-00-00' date is used through Connector/ODBC, it is automatically converted to NULL because ODBC cannot handle that kind of date.

Because MySQL performs the conversions just described, the following statements work (assume that idate is a DATE column):

INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES (19970505);
INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES ('19970505');
INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES ('97-05-05');
INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES ('1997.05.05');
INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES ('1997 05 05');
INSERT INTO t1 (idate) VALUES ('0000-00-00');

SELECT idate FROM t1 WHERE idate >= '1997-05-05';
SELECT idate FROM t1 WHERE idate >= 19970505;
SELECT MOD(idate,100) FROM t1 WHERE idate >= 19970505;
SELECT idate FROM t1 WHERE idate >= '19970505';

However, the following statement does not work:

SELECT idate FROM t1 WHERE STRCMP(idate,'20030505')=0;

STRCMP() is a string function, so it converts idate to a string in 'YYYY-MM-DD' format and performs a string comparison. It does not convert '20030505' to the date '2003-05-05' and perform a date comparison.

If you enable the ALLOW_INVALID_DATES SQL mode, MySQL permits you to store dates that are given only limited checking: MySQL requires only that the day is in the range from 1 to 31 and the month is in the range from 1 to 12. This makes MySQL very convenient for Web applications where you obtain year, month, and day in three different fields and you want to store exactly what the user inserted (without date validation).

MySQL permits you to store dates where the day or month and day are zero. This is convenient if you want to store a birthdate in a DATE column and you know only part of the date. To disallow zero month or day parts in dates, enable the NO_ZERO_IN_DATE mode.

MySQL permits you to store a “zero” value of '0000-00-00' as a “dummy date.” This is in some cases more convenient than using NULL values. If a date to be stored in a DATE column cannot be converted to any reasonable value, MySQL stores '0000-00-00'. To disallow '0000-00-00', enable the NO_ZERO_DATE mode.

To have MySQL check all dates and accept only legal dates (unless overridden by IGNORE), set the sql_mode system variable to "NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE".

The concept of the NULL value is a common source of confusion for newcomers to SQL, who often think that NULL is the same thing as an empty string ''. This is not the case. For example, the following statements are completely different:

mysql> INSERT INTO my_table (phone) VALUES (NULL);
mysql> INSERT INTO my_table (phone) VALUES ('');

Both statements insert a value into the phone column, but the first inserts a NULL value and the second inserts an empty string. The meaning of the first can be regarded as “phone number is not known” and the meaning of the second can be regarded as “the person is known to have no phone, and thus no phone number.”

To help with NULL handling, you can use the IS NULL and IS NOT NULL operators and the IFNULL() function.

In SQL, the NULL value is never true in comparison to any other value, even NULL. An expression that contains NULL always produces a NULL value unless otherwise indicated in the documentation for the operators and functions involved in the expression. All columns in the following example return NULL:

mysql> SELECT NULL, 1+NULL, CONCAT('Invisible',NULL);

To search for column values that are NULL, you cannot use an expr = NULL test. The following statement returns no rows, because expr = NULL is never true for any expression:

mysql> SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE phone = NULL;

To look for NULL values, you must use the IS NULL test. The following statements show how to find the NULL phone number and the empty phone number:

mysql> SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE phone IS NULL;
mysql> SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE phone = '';

See Section 3.3.4.6, “Working with NULL Values”, for additional information and examples.

You can add an index on a column that can have NULL values if you are using the MyISAM, InnoDB, or MEMORY storage engine. Otherwise, you must declare an indexed column NOT NULL, and you cannot insert NULL into the column.

When reading data with LOAD DATA, empty or missing columns are updated with ''. To load a NULL value into a column, use \N in the data file. The literal word NULL may also be used under some circumstances. See Section 13.2.7, “LOAD DATA Statement”.

When using DISTINCT, GROUP BY, or ORDER BY, all NULL values are regarded as equal.

When using ORDER BY, NULL values are presented first, or last if you specify DESC to sort in descending order.

Aggregate (group) functions such as COUNT(), MIN(), and SUM() ignore NULL values. The exception to this is COUNT(*), which counts rows and not individual column values. For example, the following statement produces two counts. The first is a count of the number of rows in the table, and the second is a count of the number of non-NULL values in the age column:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*), COUNT(age) FROM person;

For some data types, MySQL handles NULL values specially. If you insert NULL into a TIMESTAMP column, the current date and time is inserted. If you insert NULL into an integer or floating-point column that has the AUTO_INCREMENT attribute, the next number in the sequence is inserted.

An alias can be used in a query select list to give a column a different name. You can use the alias in GROUP BY, ORDER BY, or HAVING clauses to refer to the column:

SELECT SQRT(a*b) AS root FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY root HAVING root > 0;
SELECT id, COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY id HAVING cnt > 0;
SELECT id AS 'Customer identity' FROM tbl_name;

Standard SQL disallows references to column aliases in a WHERE clause. This restriction is imposed because when the WHERE clause is evaluated, the column value may not yet have been determined. For example, the following query is illegal:

SELECT id, COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM tbl_name
  WHERE cnt > 0 GROUP BY id;

The WHERE clause determines which rows should be included in the GROUP BY clause, but it refers to the alias of a column value that is not known until after the rows have been selected, and grouped by the GROUP BY.

In the select list of a query, a quoted column alias can be specified using identifier or string quoting characters:

SELECT 1 AS `one`, 2 AS 'two';

Elsewhere in the statement, quoted references to the alias must use identifier quoting or the reference is treated as a string literal. For example, this statement groups by the values in column id, referenced using the alias `a`:

SELECT id AS 'a', COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY `a`;

This statement groups by the literal string 'a' and does not work as you may expect:

SELECT id AS 'a', COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM tbl_name
  GROUP BY 'a';

If you receive the following message when trying to perform a ROLLBACK, it means that one or more of the tables you used in the transaction do not support transactions:

Warning: Some non-transactional changed tables couldn't be rolled back

These nontransactional tables are not affected by the ROLLBACK statement.

If you were not deliberately mixing transactional and nontransactional tables within the transaction, the most likely cause for this message is that a table you thought was transactional actually is not. This can happen if you try to create a table using a transactional storage engine that is not supported by your mysqld server (or that was disabled with a startup option). If mysqld does not support a storage engine, it instead creates the table as a MyISAM table, which is nontransactional.

You can check the storage engine for a table by using either of these statements:

SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'tbl_name';
SHOW CREATE TABLE tbl_name;

See Section 13.7.7.38, “SHOW TABLE STATUS Statement”, and Section 13.7.7.10, “SHOW CREATE TABLE Statement”.

To check which storage engines your mysqld server supports, use this statement:

SHOW ENGINES;

See Section 13.7.7.16, “SHOW ENGINES Statement” for full details.

If the total length of the DELETE statement for related_table is more than the default value of the max_allowed_packet system variable, you should split it into smaller parts and execute multiple DELETE statements. You probably get the fastest DELETE by specifying only 100 to 1,000 related_column values per statement if the related_column is indexed. If the related_column isn't indexed, the speed is independent of the number of arguments in the IN clause.

If you have a complicated query that uses many tables but that returns no rows, you should use the following procedure to find out what is wrong:

Floating-point numbers sometimes cause confusion because they are approximate and not stored as exact values. A floating-point value as written in an SQL statement may not be the same as the value represented internally. Attempts to treat floating-point values as exact in comparisons may lead to problems. They are also subject to platform or implementation dependencies. The FLOAT and DOUBLE data types are subject to these issues. For DECIMAL columns, MySQL performs operations with a precision of 65 decimal digits, which should solve most common inaccuracy problems.

The following example uses DOUBLE to demonstrate how calculations that are done using floating-point operations are subject to floating-point error.

mysql> CREATE TABLE t1 (i INT, d1 DOUBLE, d2 DOUBLE);
mysql> INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (1, 101.40, 21.40), (1, -80.00, 0.00),
    -> (2, 0.00, 0.00), (2, -13.20, 0.00), (2, 59.60, 46.40),
    -> (2, 30.40, 30.40), (3, 37.00, 7.40), (3, -29.60, 0.00),
    -> (4, 60.00, 15.40), (4, -10.60, 0.00), (4, -34.00, 0.00),
    -> (5, 33.00, 0.00), (5, -25.80, 0.00), (5, 0.00, 7.20),
    -> (6, 0.00, 0.00), (6, -51.40, 0.00);

mysql> SELECT i, SUM(d1) AS a, SUM(d2) AS b
    -> FROM t1 GROUP BY i HAVING a <> b;

+------+-------+------+
| i    | a     | b    |
+------+-------+------+
|    1 |  21.4 | 21.4 |
|    2 |  76.8 | 76.8 |
|    3 |   7.4 |  7.4 |
|    4 |  15.4 | 15.4 |
|    5 |   7.2 |  7.2 |
|    6 | -51.4 |    0 |
+------+-------+------+

The result is correct. Although the first five records look like they should not satisfy the comparison (the values of a and b do not appear to be different), they may do so because the difference between the numbers shows up around the tenth decimal or so, depending on factors such as computer architecture or the compiler version or optimization level. For example, different CPUs may evaluate floating-point numbers differently.

If columns d1 and d2 had been defined as DECIMAL rather than DOUBLE, the result of the SELECT query would have contained only one row—the last one shown above.

The correct way to do floating-point number comparison is to first decide on an acceptable tolerance for differences between the numbers and then do the comparison against the tolerance value. For example, if we agree that floating-point numbers should be regarded the same if they are same within a precision of one in ten thousand (0.0001), the comparison should be written to find differences larger than the tolerance value:

mysql> SELECT i, SUM(d1) AS a, SUM(d2) AS b FROM t1
    -> GROUP BY i HAVING ABS(a - b) > 0.0001;
+------+-------+------+
| i    | a     | b    |
+------+-------+------+
|    6 | -51.4 |    0 |
+------+-------+------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Conversely, to get rows where the numbers are the same, the test should find differences within the tolerance value:

mysql> SELECT i, SUM(d1) AS a, SUM(d2) AS b FROM t1
    -> GROUP BY i HAVING ABS(a - b) <= 0.0001;
+------+------+------+
| i    | a    | b    |
+------+------+------+
|    1 | 21.4 | 21.4 |
|    2 | 76.8 | 76.8 |
|    3 |  7.4 |  7.4 |
|    4 | 15.4 | 15.4 |
|    5 |  7.2 |  7.2 |
+------+------+------+
5 rows in set (0.03 sec)

Floating-point values are subject to platform or implementation dependencies. Suppose that you execute the following statements:

CREATE TABLE t1(c1 FLOAT(53,0), c2 FLOAT(53,0));
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('1e+52','-1e+52');
SELECT * FROM t1;

On some platforms, the SELECT statement returns inf and -inf. On others, it returns 0 and -0.

An implication of the preceding issues is that if you attempt to create a replica by dumping table contents with mysqldump on the source and reloading the dump file into the replica, tables containing floating-point columns might differ between the two hosts.

If you get a duplicate-key error when using ALTER TABLE to change the character set or collation of a character column, the cause is either that the new column collation maps two keys to the same value or that the table is corrupted. In the latter case, you should run REPAIR TABLE on the table. REPAIR TABLE works for MyISAM, ARCHIVE, and CSV tables.

If you use ALTER TABLE on a transactional table or if you are using Windows, ALTER TABLE unlocks the table if you had done a LOCK TABLE on it. This is done because InnoDB and these operating systems cannot drop a table that is in use.

Temporary tables created with CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE have the following limitations: