Disable InnoDB in 5.6

MySQL & MariaDB Other MySQL® Questions
1

Previous versions I could disable InnoDB with a simple

skip-innodb

in my.cnf

With version 5.6x there seems to be some confusion on how to do this.

I have tried various options such as:

ignore_builtin_innodb
ignore-builtin-innodb

None work and mysql will always fail to start with

[ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB

I believe this is because those statements force MySQL to use the InnoDB plugin instead and as I don’t specify where to find it, it fails.

The only thing I can do is this:

default_storage_engine = MyISAM

That works in that all tables used are MyISAM (which is what I want). But InnoDB is still used and it seems a waste considering it takes up so much memory.

There are around 40 MyISAM tables using a total diskspace of 4Mb. Yet MySQL is using up 640Mb - the bulk of which is probably being allocated to InnoDB.

I know that InnoDB is the engine of choice now but why can I not run MySQL with it totally disabled and not using memory like in previous versions?

Is it because I’m using the non production / development version 5.6.x ? I think I had similar problems with 5.5.x

If InnoDB can not be disabled what can I do to set it’s memory footprint to near zero?

2

Could not find a solution anywhere so dropped back down to 5.5x

skip-innodb in my.cnf

did the trick. innodb not loading as requested and not using up memory.

3

(Although you have already downgraded and solved it that way)
LarryDavid wrote on Wed, 21 December 2011 22:50

Something like:

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 8M

Which was the previous default value is probably a good start.