Recent changes to support better security by increasing strength of Diffie-Hellman cipher suites from 512-bit to 2048-bit were introduced to MySQL Server 5.7. While this change enhances security, it is an aggressive change in that 2048-bit DH ciphers are not universally supported. This has become a problem specifically for Java users, as only Java 8 JRE (currently) supports DH ciphers greater than 1024 bits. Making the problem more acute, this change was back-ported from MySQL Server 5.7 to the recent 5.6.26 and 5.5.45 releases in response to a community bug report. This blog post will identify affected applications, existing workarounds, and our plans to provide a more …

MySQL 5.5.45 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were 0 “Functionality Added or Changed” items this time, 1 “Security Fix”, and just 9 bugs overall fixed.

Out of the 9 bugs, there were 3 InnoDB bugs, 1 security-related bug, and 1 potential crashing bug. Here are the ones worth noting:

• InnoDB: An index record was not found on rollback due to inconsistencies in the purge_node_t structure.
• InnoDB: An assertion was raised when InnoDB attempted to dereference a NULL foreign key object.
• InnoDB: On Unix-like platforms, os_file_create_simple_no_error_handling_func and …

The Percona version of MySQL has been such a good replacement for the generic MySQL version that many of the features and options that existed in Percona have been merged into the generic MySQL. Innodb_fast_checksum was an option added to … Continue reading →

MySQL 5.5.44 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were 0 “Functionality Added or Changed” items this time, and just 15 overall bugs fixed.

Out of the 15 bugs, there were 5 InnoDB bugs (1 of which also spans partitioning), 1 security-related bug, 1 performance-related, and 3 additional potential crashing bugs. Here are the ones worth noting:

• InnoDB: An assertion was raised on shutdown due to XA PREPARE transactions holding explicit locks.
• InnoDB: Removal of a foreign key object from the data dictionary cache during error handling caused the server to exit.
• InnoDB: SHOW ENGINE …

MySQL 5.5.43 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were only 2 “Functionality Added or Changed” items this time, and 10 additional bugs fixed.

Out of the 10 bugs, there was 1 InnoDB bug, 1 replication bug, and 6 crashing bugs, all of which seemed rather minor or obscure. Here are the ones worth noting:

• Functionality Changed: CMake support was updated to handle CMake version 3.1.
• Functionality Added: The server now includes its version number when it writes the initial “starting” message to the error log, to make it easier to tell which server instance error log output applies to. This value is the …

MySQL 5.5.42 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were only 3 “Functionality Added or Changed” bugs this time, all related to SSL, and only 9 bugs overall fixed.

Out of the 9 bugs, there were 2 InnoDB bugs, and 1 replication bug, all of which seemed rather minor or obscure. Here are the ones worth noting:

• Support for the SSL 2.0 and SSL 3.0 protocols has been disabled because they provide weak encryption. (Bug #19820550, Bug #19921150)
• yaSSL was upgraded to version 2.3.7. (Bug #19695101, Bug #20201864)
• The valid date range of the SSL certificates in mysql-test/std_data has been extended to the year 2029. (Bug …

MySQL 5.5.41 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

< Forgive me for the flurry of my latest release "Overview and Highlights" that will follow, as I had a serious-at-the-time health issue that delayed me for about a month. Back on track now though. :) >

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There was only 1 “Functionality Added or Changed” bugs this time, and 14 bugs overall fixed.

Out of the 14 bugs, there were 6 InnoDB bugs, and 2 replication bugs, all of which seemed rather minor or obscure. The one worth noting is the “Functionality Added or Changed” item, which was:

• yaSSL was upgraded to version 2.3.5. (Bug #19695101)

With the recent yaSSL issues, …

MySQL 5.5.40 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.5.html

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were 0 “Functionality Added or Changed” bugs this time, and 18 bugs overall fixed.

Out of the 18 bugs, most seemed rather minor or obscure, but there are 3 I think are worth noting (all 3 are InnoDB-related, regressions, and serious if you encounter them, so best to be aware of them):

• InnoDB: An ALTER TABLE … ADD FOREIGN KEY operation could cause a serious error. (Bug #19471516, Bug #73650)
• InnoDB: With a transaction isolation level less than or equal to READ COMMITTED, gap locks …

Last week I had to downgrade from MySQL 5.6 to 5.5. The reason for this was that the application used a very old Connector/J and that's incompatible with MySQL 5.6 because the removal of SET OPTION syntax.

We're now planning to upgrade Connector/J to be able to upgrade to 5.6 again.

There are two methods of downgrading:

• Dump/Restore with mysqldump. This is easy and reliable, but can take more time.

• In place (replace binaries, don't change data). This fast, but won't work if file formats have changed.

As expected this is documented in the MySQL Reference Manual.

I went for the in place method. I expected this to work without many issues as this database was not using the fancy new features like fulltext indexes for InnoDB. All tables used …

MySQL 5.5.39 was recently released (it is the latest MySQL 5.5, is GA), and is available for download here:

http://downloads.skysql.com/archive/index/p/mysql/v/5.5.39

This release, similar to the last 5.5 release, is mostly uneventful.

There were two “Functionality Added or Changed” and 24 bugs fixed.

The “Functionality Added or Changed” changes are:

• CMake support was updated to handle CMake version 3.
• The timed_mutexes system variable has no effect and is deprecated.

Out of the 24 bugs, most seemed rather minor or obscure, but here are the ones I think are worth noting (crashing, security, wrong results, deadlock):

• InnoDB: Opening a parent table that has thousands of child tables could result in a long semaphore wait condition.
• …