MySQL Community Server 5.6.21 has been released

[Vishal Chaudhary]

Dear MySQL users,

MySQL Server 5.6.21, a new version of the popular Open Source
Database Management System, has been released. MySQL 5.6.21 is
recommended for use on production systems.

For an overview of what's new in MySQL 5.6, please see

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/mysql-nutshell.html

    Starting with 5.6.11, Microsoft Windows packages for MySQL 5.6
    are available both as a "full" installer and as a "web" installer.
    The full installer is significantly larger and comes bundled with
    the latest software releases available. This bundle makes it easy
    to download and configure a full server and development suite.

    The web installer doesn't come bundled with any actual products
    and instead relies on download-on-demand to fetch only the
    products you choose to install. This makes the initial download
    much smaller but increases install time as the individual products
    will need to be downloaded.

For information on installing MySQL 5.6.21 on new servers or upgrading
to MySQL 5.6.21 from previous MySQL releases, please see

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/installing.html

MySQL Server is available in source and binary form for a number of
platforms from our download pages at

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

Not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point in time, so if you
can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose
another download site.

We welcome and appreciate your feedback, bug reports, bug fixes,
patches, etc:

https://wikis.oracle.com/display/mysql/Contributing

The following section lists the changes in the MySQL 5.6 since
the release of MySQL 5.6.20. It may also be viewed
online at

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/relnotes/mysql/5.6/en/news-5-6-21.html

Enjoy!

Changes in MySQL 5.6.21 (2014-09-23)

   InnoDB Notes

     * The --skip-innodb option is now deprecated and its use results
       in a warning. It will be removed in a future MySQL release.
       This also applies to its synonyms (--innodb=OFF,
       --disable-innodb, and so forth).

   MySQL Enterprise Notes

     * MySQL Enterprise Edition now includes a set of encryption
       functions based on the OpenSSL library that expose OpenSSL
       capabilities at the SQL level. These functions enable
       Enterprise applications to perform the following operations:

          + Implement added data protection using public-key
            asymmetric cryptography

          + Create public and private keys and digital signatures

          + Perform asymmetric encryption and decryption

          + Use cryptographic hashing for digital signing and data
            verification and validation
       For more information, see MySQL Enterprise Encryption
       Functions
   (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/enterprise-encryption.html).

   Functionality Added or Changed

     * Internally, spatial data types such as Geometry are
       represented as BLOB values, so when invoked with the
       --hex-blob option, mysqldump now displays spatial values in
       hex. (Bug #43544, Bug #11752369)

   Bugs Fixed

     * InnoDB; Partitioning: Large numbers of partitioned InnoDB
       tables could consume much more memory when used in MySQL 5.6
       or 5.7 than the memory used by the same tables used in
       previous releases of the MySQL Server. (Bug #17780517, Bug
       #70641)
       References: This bug was introduced by Bug #11764622, Bug
       #57480.

     * InnoDB: An ALTER TABLE ... ADD FOREIGN KEY operation could
       cause a serious error. (Bug #19471516, Bug #73650)

     * InnoDB: In debug builds, an INSERT operation affecting
       compressed tables would raise a sync-related assertion. (Bug
       #19295893)

     * InnoDB: Retrieval of multiple values with a single get command
       would return incorrect results instead of an error message.
       The InnoDB memcached plugin does not currently support
       retrieval of multiple values with a single get command. (Bug
       #19172212, Bug #72453)

     * InnoDB: Attempting to perform operations on a timed out key
       would cause the memcached daemon to crash and restart. (Bug
       #19172013, Bug #72586)

     * InnoDB: With a transaction isolation level less than or equal
       to READ COMMITTED, gap locks were not taken when scanning a
       unique secondary index to check for duplicates. As a result,
       duplicate check logic failed allowing duplicate key values in
       the unique secondary index. (Bug #19140907)
       References: This bug is a regression of Bug #16133801.

     * InnoDB: In rare cases, the purge process would attempt to
       delete a secondary index record that was not marked for
       deletion, resulting in an inconsistent secondary index. (Bug
       #19138298)

     * InnoDB: During recovery, a segmentation fault would occur when
       marking a table as corrupt. (Bug #18942294)

     * InnoDB: A failed in-place ALTER TABLE operation would leave
       behind non-unique temporary file names in the data dictionary
       preventing future ALTER TABLE operations on the same table due
       to temporary file name conflicts. To avoid this problem,
       temporary file names are made unique by appending a static
       global number that is initialized to a random distributed
       32-bit number using ut_time() and ut_crc32(). The number is
       then incremented atomically for each assigned temporary file
       name. Previously, temporary files were named using the format
       #sql-ibtid, where tid is the table ID. Temporary files are now
       named using the format #sql-ibtid-inc, where tid is the table
       ID and inc is the incremented number. (Bug #18734396, Bug
       #72594)

     * InnoDB: srv_active_wake_master_thread() was called directly in
       innobase_commit and innobase_prepare, waking up the master
       thread and incrementing srv_activity_count.
       srv_active_wake_master_thread() should only be called after
       committing write transactions, not after read-only
       transactions or rollbacks. This patch also replaces some calls
       to srv_active_wake_master_thread() with calls to
       ib_wake_master_thread(). (Bug #18477009, Bug #72137)

     * InnoDB: An in-place ALTER TABLE operation on a table with a
       broken foreign key constraint could raise an assertion. (Bug
       #16869435)

     * InnoDB: Inserting a record into an InnoDB table with a key
       that falls between the maximum key of a full page and the
       minimum key of the "next" page could result in unnecessary
       page splits and under-filled pages. If the insert point is at
       the end of a page, InnoDB now attempts to insert to the next
       page before splitting the page. (Bug #15923864, Bug #67718)

     * Replication: After the fix for Bug #16861624, killing a
       multi-threaded slave worker which was waiting for a commit
       lock caused a debug assertion to fail. This fix ensures that
       such a situation can not occur. (Bug #19311260)

     * Replication: When committing a transaction, a flag is now used
       to check whether a thread has been created, rather than
       checking the thread itself, which uses more resources,
       particularly when running the server with
       master_info_repository=TABLE. (Bug #18684222)
       References: See also Bug #17967378.

     * Replication: A multi-threaded slave now checks that a free
       worker is available to dispatch the next event. In previous
       versions, a multi-threaded slave crashes with a worker error
       if the thread coordinator can not find a free worker. The
       crash was caused when the coordinator did not return a free
       worker, for example if the coordinator was aborted at the same
       time using STOP SLAVE. (Bug #18363515)

     * Replication: When mysqlbinlog processed multiple binary log
       files into a single output file, this file was not in a useful
       state for point-in-time recovery, when it failed with the
       error, When @@SESSION.GTID_NEXT is set to a GTID, you must
       explicitly set it to a different value after a COMMIT or
       ROLLBACK. Please check GTID_NEXT variable manual page for
       detailed explanation. Current @@SESSION.GTID_NEXT is 'xyz'.
       When mysqlbinlog processes a binary log containing GTIDs, it
       outputs SET gtid_next statements, but gtid_next is set to
       undefined whenever a commit occurs; this left gtid_next
       undefined when the server had finished processing the output
       from mysqlbinlog. When the next binary log file started with
       one or more anonymous statements or transactions, the
       combination of gtid_next being left undefined at the end of
       the first binary log and the second binary log containing
       anonymous transactions to the error described previously
       (Error 1837, ER_GTID_NEXT_TYPE_UNDEFINED_GROUP).
       To fix this issue, now, whenever mysqlbinlog encounters this
       situation, it inserts SET gtid_next = AUTOMATIC if required to
       avoid leaving the previous binary log with gtid_next
       undefined.
       In addition, as a result of this fix, mysqlbinlog no longer
       outputs session variable information for every binary log;
       now, this value is printed only once unless it changes. (Bug
       #18258933, Bug #71695)

     * Replication: When the I/O thread reconnected to a master using
       GTIDs and multithreaded slaves while in the middle of a
       transaction, it failed to abort the transaction, leaving a
       partial transaction in the relay log, and then retrieving the
       same transaction again. This occurred when performing a
       rotation of the relay log. Now when reconnecting, the server
       checks before rotating the log in such cases, and waits first
       for any ongoing transaction to complete. (Bug #17326020)

     * Replication: When using semisynchronous replication, if the
       binary log position was changed to a future position on a
       slave then an assertion error was generated on the master.
       This fix ensures that in such a situation the future position
       is correctly acknowledged and an error is instead generated on
       the slave. (Bug #70327, Bug #17453826)

     * Replication: When an SQL thread which was waiting for a commit
       lock was killed and restarted it caused a transaction to be
       skipped on slave. This fix ensures that thread positions are
       correctly persisted and transactions resume at the correct
       position. (Bug #69873, Bug #17450876)

     * Replication: On a master that is using semisynchronous
       replication, where rpl_semi_sync_master_wait_no_slave is
       enabled and rpl_semi_sync_master_timeout is set to long
       timeout, killing the I/O thread could cause the server to hang
       on shutdown. This fix ensures that if the dump thread finds
       that there no semisynchronous slaves connected to the master,
       the setting of rpl_semi_sync_master_wait_no_slave is ignored
       and the shutdown proceeds correctly. (Bug #71047, Bug
       #17879675)

     * Replication: When using row-based replication, setting a
       slave's slave_rows_search_algorithms variable to HASH_SCAN
       caused an ER_RECORD_NOT_FOUND error even though that record
       existed in the storage layer. This fix ensures that the unique
       key for each record is correctly maintained and such a
       situation does not occur. (Bug #72788, Bug #18860225)

     * Replication: When an event group was spanned across multiple
       relay log files, a slave could incorrectly identify
       GTID-header group boundaries. This meant that when a
       transaction was retried, or if the SQL thread was stopped in
       the middle of a transaction after some rotates, the
       Gtid_log_event was being silently skipped on the slave, and
       the transaction was logged with the slave's GTID. This problem
       also impacted on using START SLAVE UNTIL MASTER_LOG_POS =
       log_pos; with GTIDs enabled. If log_pos was in the middle of a
       transaction, the Gtid_log_event was not correctly detected as
       the beginning of the transaction and replication stopped
       before this event. With this fix, threads correctly detect
       that they are part of a group, and this is used to check if a
       Gtid_log_event is part of a transaction. (Bug #72313, Bug
       #18652178, Bug #18306199)

     * Replication: The error messages generated when a duplicate
       server UUID causes issues during replication have been
       improved. The slave error now identifies the duplicate server
       UUID and the master error identifies the zombie thread that
       has been killed. (Bug #72578, Bug #18731211)

     * Replication: The CLIENT_REMEMBER_OPTIONS flag for compressed
       slave connections is no longer reset and all options are
       retained. This restores functionality of all options to
       compressed slave connections. (Bug #72901, Bug #18923691, Bug
       #73324, Bug #19244772)

     * Replication: When using row-based replication, running a long
       transaction involving a large number of events could trigger
       an Out of Memory (OOM) error if the slave's table structure
       was not compatible with the master's table structure. Such an
       incompatible situation could occur if the table on the slave
       had been manually changed, or when replicating between
       different MySQL versions that have different data types. This
       OOM error was caused because the virtual temporary tables
       created for the row conversion were not being freed until the
       end of the transaction, which was a problem when replicating
       large numbers of events.
       Starting with this version, such virtual tables are correctly
       freed during the conversion process. (Bug #72610, Bug
       #18770469)

     * With DTrace support enabled, certain other compilation options
       could cause the build to fail. (Bug #19506247)

     * yaSSL could fail preauthorization if the client supplied
       inaccurate buffer lengths. (Bug #19370676, Bug #19355577)

     * Competition between threads could lead to timeout failure
       trying to rotate the audit log file. (Bug #19184973)

     * LPAD() and RPAD() could cause a server exit if the pad string
       argument was not well formed. (Bug #18935421)

     * The optimizer could create a zero-length column for a
       temporary table, causing a server exit. (Bug #18928848)

     * MOD for very small decimal right-hand arguments could cause a
       server exit. (Bug #18469276)

     * The client library now includes a call to
       X509_verify_cert_error_string() in the SSL certificate
       verification code, to be more robust in detecting invalid
       certificates. (Bug #18384260)

     * If the left-hand-side of an IN predicate was a scalar subquery
       but returned no row, the server could exit. (Bug #18223655,
       Bug #18447874)

     * The thread_concurrency system variable is deprecated, but no
       warning resulted from setting it at server startup. (Bug
       #17873011)

     * Sending a SIGQUIT or SIGINT signal to mysql could result in a
       glibc double free or corruption error. (Bug #17297324)

     * Invalid memory access could occur when using prepared
       statements if a mysql client connection was lost after
       statement preparation was complete and there was at least one
       statement that was in initialized state but not prepared yet.
       (Bug #70429, Bug #17512527)

     * LIKE matches failed for code points of HALF WIDTH KATAKANA in
       the sjis and cp932 character sets. (Bug #47641, Bug #11755818)

     * On EL7, installation of MySQL from RPM packages could fail if
       postfix had previously been installed using yum. (Bug #73507,
       Bug #19392051, Bug #19392149)

     * mysql_upgrade could fail if the mysql.user table contained
       multiple accounts with the same user name and host name where
       the host name differed in lettercase. This is still not
       permitted, but now mysql_upgrade prints a more informative
       error message to indicate the nature of the problem:
       ERROR 1644 (45000): Multiple accounts exist for user_name,
       host_name that differ only in Host lettercase; remove all
       except one of them (Bug #72066, Bug #18415196)

     * If the general query log or slow query log file was set to a
       FIFO or socket file, and the file reader went away, the server
       stopped executing statements. Now the server detects such
       files, logs an error message, and continues with the
       appropriate log disabled. (Bug #67088, Bug #14757009)

     * A simultaneous OPTIMIZE TABLE and online ALTER TABLE on the
       same InnoDB table could result in deadlock. (Bug #71433, Bug
       #18110156)

     * The query cache was not invalidated for a table when a CASCADE
       DELETE or CASCADE UPDATE referential constraint was specified
       and the database name or table name contained special
       characters. (Bug #72547, Bug #18710853)

On Behalf of the MySQL/ORACLE RE Team,
Vishal Chaudhary