There are a few circumstances where one will not want to run with only MyISAM tables. In this case, it can be beneficial to completely disable InnoDB.

As InnoDB has become more prevalent, disabling it in MySQL requires a little more effort than before.

In MariaDB 10.0, you can still completely disable it as you have done in the past (just add the –skip-innodb option, specify default-storage-engine=MyISAM, and comment out other InnoDB options):

[mysqld]
skip-innodb
default-storage-engine=MyISAM

Alternatively, instead of –skip-innodb, you can instead use “innodb=OFF”:

[mysqld]
skip-innodb
default-storage-engine=MyISAM

In MySQL 5.6, the –skip-innodb option has been deprecated (though still currently works), and since InnoDB is the new “default” storage engine, you must set both “default-storage-engine” and the new “default-tmp-storage-engine” options to “MyISAM”. If you …

I know, what, MyISAM-only? Yes, it’s true, and it occurs more than you might think.

If you do run MyISAM-only, it’s common to have disabled InnoDB altogether (–skip-innodb) to avoid allocating any RAM to it, and to avoid unnecessary files required for backups, and so forth. (See this post if interested in disabling InnoDB in MySQL 5.6 and/or MariaDB 10.0.)

One improvement in MySQL 5.6 and MariaDB 10.0 is the addition of some system tables. The 2 that are in both are `innodb_table_stats` and `innodb_index_stats`, both of which have an engine type of InnoDB. (The 1 additional system table in MariaDB 10.0 is `gtid_slave_pos`, and the 3 additional system tables in MySQL 5.6 are `slave_master_info`, `slave_relay_log_info`, and `slave_worker_info`.)

The issue, with regards to running MyISAM-only, is that these new …