MySQL unknown table engine innodb

Question

I am trying to migrate a test website on drupal onto a live server on Amazon ec2. I migrated the database using phpmyadmin, and tried to access the site. I got this error:

PDOException: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1286 Unknown table engine 'InnoDB': SELECT expire, value FROM {semaphore} WHERE name = :name; Array ( [:name] => variable_init ) in lock_may_be_available() (line 167 of /var/www/includes/lock.inc).

I believe the problem here is that MySQL doesn't have InnoDB. I have looked through the my.cnf file and there is no line that says skip-innodb.

I have tried show engines and it showed a bunch of engines but not innodb. I have tried restarting my server and deleting the logfile, just like has been suggested previously, but that didn't work.

Maybe what needs to be done is to somehow install the Innodb engine. Could you tell me how I may do that?

Solution

On Debian 6 this can also happen when you change the innodb_log_file_size parameter... some times mysql does not start.. but other times it just starts up bud disables innodb engine... so solution is to remove ib_logfiles from /var/lib/mysql and restart mysql

Comments

[BBB]

I'm sorry where would the error log be located? I have a mysql directory in /etc/mysql, a mysql directory /etc/mysql/mysql, and a directory /var/lib/mysql Another thing is that when I open ib_logfile0 inside var/lib/mysql it yields some funny characters

[atxdba]

I was trying to communicate where to find the error log by running the select @@log_error; query. That will tell you exactly where it is. It might be /var/log/mysql/mysql.err. Has Innodb always worked on this server? Did you try to just copy the ibdata file over from another server?

[BBB]

thanks for the help; I actually just terminated the ec2 instance and made a new one; I'll let you know if the problem persists

[BBB]

I made a new ec2 instance and everything was fine. I did install drupal first, however, so that my have been my problem. It is still quite mysterious to me however. Thank you