Hey everyone! I'm a junior system engineer and I'm currently dealing with a frustrating problem on a shared server running MariaDB 10.3. The mysql.user table keeps getting corrupted on a daily basis, and this has been going on for a week now. Initially, we identified an Out of Memory (OOM) issue, which we attempted to fix by tweaking some memory configurations, but the corruption issue persists, and it doesn't seem to be OOM related anymore. Every day, I have to manually repair the mysql.user table, and it's causing quite a bit of frustration for my clients. I heard that MyISAM tables can be pretty fragile, and I've considered converting the mysql.user table to InnoDB. However, it seems that MariaDB 10.3 doesn't support InnoDB for the mysql.user table, and upgrading might introduce compatibility issues for the clients. Does anyone have a better solution or advice on how to resolve this? I'd appreciate any help you can offer. Thanks a lot! ❤️
3 Answers
Have you talked to your DBAs about this? They might have some insights or solutions. But if it’s a small team and you're the one addressing these issues, maybe just run through the logs with them?
You might want to check if there are any disk problems first. Sometimes hardware issues can cause unexpected corruption in databases. A quick disk check could help you rule that out before diving deeper into mysql configurations.
It sounds like a tricky situation! While MariaDB does support InnoDB in general, the mysql.user table has its own limitations. It's wise to evaluate if there are collation issues preventing the conversion. Also, backups are essential—definitely make sure to have recent backups before trying any changes! Is there a senior engineer around who can give you a hand? That could save you a lot of headache!

Haha, you’d think so! I guess I'm just the one stuck tackling the issue on my own for now.