Updating from MySQL 5.0 to 5.1 - what's your experience?
Now that MySQL 5.1 has finally been labeled and released as "GA", we have noticed quite a significant increase in the download numbers for 5.1. I find this quite promising, despite the comments from some people that suggested to stay away from it for now. I performed updates of 5.0 to 5.1 several times already, and did not observe any serious problem so far. But then again, I am by no means a power user, so your mileage may vary...
I assume that many of the users are already using some older versions of MySQL and will have to perform an upgrade from the previous version to the new one. As many things have been changed and improved between 5.0 and 5.1, an upgrade needs to be planned carefully. The MySQL reference manual has an entire chapter devoted to this subject. The best general advice is probably to create a backup of your data first before attempting to upgrade!
I performed an upgrade test on an openSUSE 11.0 system that was running on the MySQL version shipped with the distribution (5.0.51a). I first loaded it with some databases that I copied from other live systems (via SQL dumps). Then I grabbed the Server, Client and shared library RPMs the "Linux x86 generic RPM (dynamically linked)" section of the 5.1 downloads page and installed them with rpm -Uhv MySQL-server-5.1.30-0.glibc23.i386.rpm MySQL-client-5.1.30-0.glibc23.i386.rpm MySQL-shared-5.1.30-0.glibc23.i386.rpm. The packages were installed without a hitch and properly replaced the existing 5.0 packages (even though they use different package names). I then restarted the server and ran mysql_upgrade afterwards.
Success! I was pretty impressed how smooth this upgrade was performed. So far, I did not notice any regression or incompatibility. But I would be interested in hearing stories and comments from other users about their upgrade experiences!
So here are some questions I would like you to answer — I would appreciate your feedback either via this blog or by email to firstname at sun dot com:
- What are your expectations and most important requirements for performing MySQL upgrades?
- Have you upgraded to MySQL 5.1 yet?
- If not, why not?
- If yes, what was your upgrade experience like? Any serious issues or problems? What platform and package format did you use?
- Did you use the documentation in our reference manual to perform the update? Was it helpful? What could be improved?
- Do you have any other comments/suggestions on the topic of upgrading MySQL?
I am looking forward to your comments. Thanks and Happy Holidays!
