Upgrading from MariaDB 11.4 to MariaDB 11.8

Upgrade guide for moving from MariaDB 11.4 to 11.8, covering new features like vector search, optimizer improvements, and data type enhancements.

This page includes details for upgrading from MariaDB 11.4 to the subsequent long-term maintenance version, MariaDB 11.8.

How to Upgrade

For Windows, see Upgrading MariaDB on Windows.

Before you upgrade, it would be best to take a backup of your database. This is always a good idea to do before an upgrade. We would recommend mariadb-backup.

The suggested upgrade procedure is:

Modify the repository configuration, so the system's package manager installs MariaDB 11.8.
1. On Debian, Ubuntu, and other similar Linux distributions, see Updating the MariaDB APT repository to a New Major Release for more information.
2. On RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, and other similar Linux distributions, see Updating the MariaDB YUM repository to a New Major Release for more information.
3. On SLES, OpenSUSE, and other similar Linux distributions, see Updating the MariaDB ZYpp repository to a New Major Release for more information.
Stop MariaDB.
Uninstall the old version of MariaDB.
1. On Debian, Ubuntu, and other similar Linux distributions, execute the following: sudo apt-get remove mariadb-server
2. On RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, and other similar Linux distributions, execute the following: sudo yum remove MariaDB-server
3. On SLES, OpenSUSE, and other similar Linux distributions, execute the following: sudo zypper remove MariaDB-server
Install the new version of MariaDB.
1. On Debian, Ubuntu, and other similar Linux distributions, see Installing MariaDB Packages with APT for more information.
2. On RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, and other similar Linux distributions, see Installing MariaDB Packages with YUM for more information.
3. On SLES, OpenSUSE, and other similar Linux distributions, see Installing MariaDB Packages with ZYpp for more information.
Make any desired changes to configuration options in option files, such as my.cnf. This includes removing any options that are no longer supported.
Start MariaDB.
Run mariadb-upgrade, to:
1. Ensure that the system tables in the mysql database are fully compatible with the new version.
2. Perform a very quick check of all tables and marks them as compatible with the new version of MariaDB.

Incompatible Changes Between 11.4 and 11.8

On most servers upgrading from 11.4 should be painless. However, there are some things that have changed which could affect an upgrade:

Options That Have Been Removed or Renamed

The following options should be removed or renamed if you use them in your option files:

Option

Reason

wsrep_load_data_splitting

Deprecated in MariaDB 10.4, defaults to OFF.

Options That Have Changed Default Values

N/A

Changes in Transaction Behavior

In MariaDB 11.8, InnoDB transactions under the Repeatable Read isolation level behave differently due to changes to the innodb_snapshot_isolation handling.

Therefore, in cases where no problem was previously provided, statements that modify data (such as DELETE or UPDATE) may now generate the following error:

ERROR 1020 (HY000): Record has changed since last read in table 't'

Description

A transaction under the Repeatable Read isolation level runs on a consistent snapshot of the data taken at the time of its initial read. A conflict may be identified when the initial transaction tries to change the same data after the snapshot has been created.

Such conflicts are more rigorously recognized in MariaDB 11.8. For example:

If another transaction has added, altered, or removed rows in the meantime, a transaction that reads a table and then tries to delete or update data may fail.
Even if the change impacts rows that weren't visible in the initial snapshot, this may still occur.

Example

-- Session 1
BEGIN;
SELECT * FROM t;

-- Session 2
BEGIN;
INSERT INTO t VALUES (2);
COMMIT;

-- Session 1
DELETE FROM t;
-- ERROR 1020 (HY000): Record has changed since last read in table 't'

Differences in Behavior by Isolation Level

Repeatable Read When a transaction tries to modify data based on an outdated snapshot, the server detects conflicts, rolls back the transactions, and returns ERROR 1020.
Serializable Conflicting transactions may be blocked earlier due to stricter locking. Depending on the execution sequence, the error may occur in another transaction or be avoided entirely.

Impact

After updating to MariaDB 11.8, applications that depend on Repeatable Read transactions may experience additional ERROR 1020 failures. This may have an impact on:

DELETE or UPDATE operations in bulk
Workloads with simultaneous changes

For more details, see innodb_snapshot_isolation.

Deprecated Options

The following options have been deprecated. They have not yet been removed, but will be in a future version, and should ideally no longer be used.

N/A