Re: Server completely locked up on ALTER TABLE statement

[Ingo Strüwing]

Hi,

Beat Vontobel wrote:
...
> The manual says on myisam_max_sort_file_size:
> "Don't use the fast sort index method to create an
> index if the temporary file would become larger
> than this." What's meant by temporary file? MYI or
> MYI+MYD?

The temporary file consists of all index records of _one_ index.

The manual does also say: "myisam_max_sort_file_size: The maximum size of the temporary file that MySQL is allowed to use while re-creating a MyISAM index (during REPAIR TABLE, ALTER TABLE, or LOAD DATA INFILE). If the file size would be larger than this value, the index is created using the key cache instead, which is slower." (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-system-variables.html)
So MySQL decides itself if it can use a sort file. I found it in the code. So the paragraph you quoted sounds misleading. I asked the docs team to fix it.

Regards

Ingo Strüwing, Senior Software Developer - Storage Engines
MySQL AB, www.mysql.com