The InnoDB redo log format is not optimal in many respects:

• At the start of ib_logfile0, there are two log checkpoint blocks, only 1024 bytes apart, while there exist devices with 4096-byte block size. The rest of the log file is written in a circular fashion.
• On log checkpoint, some file name information needs to be appended to the log.
• File names that were first changed since the latest checkpoint must be appended to the log. The bookkeeping causes some contention on log_sys.mutex and fil_system.mutex. Edit: The contention on fil_system.mutex was practically removed in MDEV-23855, and the contention on log_sys.mutex due to this is minimal.
• The log file was unnecessarily split into multiple files, logically treated as one big circular file. (MDEV-20907 in MariaDB Server 10.5.0 change the default to 1 file, and later the parameter was deprecated and ignored.)
• Log records are divided into tiny blocks of 512 bytes, with 12+4 bytes of header and footer (12+8 bytes with MDEV-12041 innodb_encrypt_log (10.4.0)).
• We are holding a mutex while zero-filling unused parts of log blocks, encrypting log blocks, or computing checksums.
• We were holding an exclusive latch while copying log blocks; this was fixed in MDEV-27774.
• Mariabackup cannot copy the log without having access to the encryption keys. (It can copy data file pages without encrypting them.)

We had some ideas to move to an append-only file and to partition the log into multiple files, but it turned out that a single fixed-size circular log file would perform best in typical scenarios.

To address the fil_system.mutex contention whose root cause was later fixed in MDEV-23855, we were considering to split the log as follows:

• ib_logfile0 (after the 512-byte header) will be append-only, unencrypted, for records containing file names and checkpoint information. A checkpoint record will comprise an LSN and a byte offset in a separate, optionally encrypted, circular log file ib_logdata. The length of each record is explicitly tagged and the payload will be followed by CRC-32C.
• The ib_logdata file can be append-only or circular. If it is circular, its fixed size must be an integer multiple of 512 bytes.

One problem would have had to be solved: When would the ib_logfile0 be shrunk? No storage is unlimited.

We will retain the ib_logfile0 and the basic format of its first 512 bytes for compatibility purposes, but other features could be improved.

• We remove log block headers and footers. We really only need is to detect the logical end of the circular log. That can be achieved by making sure that mini-transactions are terminated by a sequence number (at least one bit) and a checksum. When the circular file wraps around, the sequence number will be incremented (or the sequence bit toggled).
• For page-aligned I/O, we allow dummy records to be written, to indicate that the next bytes (until the end of the physical block, no matter what the I/O block size is) must be ignored. (The log parser will ignore these padding records, but we do not currently write them; we will keep overwriting the last physical block until it has been completely filled like we used to do until now.)
• Encrypt and compute checksum on mtr_t::m_log before initiating a write to the circular log file. The log can be copied and checksum validated without access to encryption keys.
• If the log is on a memory-mapped persistent memory device, then we will make log_sys.buf point directly to the persistent memory.

Some old InnoDB redo log parameters were removed in MDEV-23397 (MariaDB 10.6.0). Some more parameters will removed or changed here:

• innodb_log_write_ahead_size: Removed. On Linux and Microsoft Windows, we will detect and use the physical block size of the underlying storage. We will also remove the log_padded counter from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INNODB_METRICS.
• innodb_log_file_buffering: Added (MDEV-28766). This controls the use of O_DIRECT on the ib_logfile0 when the physical block size can be determined
• innodb_log_buffer_size: The minimum value is raised to 2MiB and the granularity increased from 1024 to 4096 bytes. This buffer will also be used during recovery. Ignored when the log is memory-mapped (on PMEM or /dev/shm).
• innodb_log_file_size: The allocation granularity is reduced from 1MiB to 4KiB.

Some global variables will be adjusted as well:

• Innodb_os_log_fsyncs: Removed. This will be included in Innodb_data_fsyncs.
• Innodb_os_log_pending_fsyncs: Removed. This was limited to at most 1 by design.
• Innodb_log_pending_writes: Removed. This was limited to at most 1 by design.

The circular log file ib_logfile0

The file name ib_logfile0 and the existing format of the first 512 bytes will be retained for the purpose of upgrading and preventing downgrading. In the first 512 bytes of the file, the following information will be present:

• InnoDB redo log format version identifier (in the format introduced by MySQL 5.7.9/MariaDB 10.2.2)
• CRC-32C checksum

After the first 512 bytes, there will be two 64-byte checkpoint blocks at the byte offsets 4096 and 8192, containing:

• The checkpoint LSN
• The LSN at the time the checkpoint was created, pointing to an optional sequence of FILE_MODIFY records and a FILE_CHECKPOINT record

The circular redo log record area starts at offset 12288 and extends to the end of the file. Unless the file was created by mariadb-backup, the file size will be a multiple of 4096 bytes.

All writes to ib_logfile0 will be synchronous and durable (O_DSYNC, fdatasync() or O_SYNC, fsync() or pmem_persist()).

Payload encoding

The payload area will contain records in the MDEV-12353 format. Each mini-transaction will be followed by a sequence byte 0x00 or 0x01 (the value of the sequence bit), optionally (if the log is encrypted) a 8-byte nonce, and a CRC-32C of all the bytes (except the sequence byte), so that backup can avoid recomputing the checksum while copying the log to a new file.

We want to be able to avoid overwriting the last log block, so we cannot have an explicit 'end of log' marker. We must associate each mini-transaction (atomic sequence of log records) with a sequence number (at the minimum, a sequence bit) and a checksum. The 4-byte CRC-32C is a good candidate, because it is already being used in data page checksums.

Padding

We might want to introduce a special mini-transaction 'Skip the next N bytes', encoded in sizeof(CRC)+2+log(N) bytes: CRC, record type and length, subtype and the value of the sequence bit, and variable-length encoded N. However, for a compressed storage device, it would be helpful to not have any garbage bytes in the log file. It would be better to initialize all those N bytes.

If we need to pad a block with fewer bytes than the minimum size, we would write a record to skip the minimum size.

This has been implemented with arbitrary-length FILE_CHECKPOINT mini-transactions whose payload consists of NUL bytes. The parser will ignore such records. We are not currently writing such records, but instead overwriting the last incomplete log block when more log is being appended, just like InnoDB always did.

Mini-transaction encoding: Prepending or appending a CRC to each MDEV-12353 mini-transaction

In the MDEV-12353 encoding, a record cannot start with the bytes 0x00 or 0x01. Mini-transactions are currently being terminated by the byte 0x00. We could store the sequence bit in the terminating byte of the mini-transaction. The checksum would exclude the terminating byte.

Only the payload bytes would be encrypted (not record types or lengths, and not page identifiers either). In that way, records can be parsed and validated efficiently. Decryption would only have to be invoked when the log really needs to be applied on the page. The initialization vector for encryption and decryption can include the unencrypted record header bytes.

It could be best to store the CRC before the mini-transaction payload, because the CRC of non-zero bytes cannot be 0. Hence, we can detect the end of the log without even parsing the mini-transaction bytes.

Pros: Minimal overhead: sizeof(CRC) bytes per mini-transaction.
Cons: Recovery may have to parse a lot of log before determining that the end of the log was reached.

In the end, the CRC was written after the mini-transaction. The log parser can flag an inconsistency if the maximum mini-transaction size would be exceeded.

Alternative encoding (scrapped idea): Prepending a mini-transaction header with length and CRC

We could encapsulate MDEV-12353 records (without the mini-transaction terminating NUL byte) in the following structure:

• variable-length encoded integer of total_length << 2 | sequence_bit
• CRC of the data payload and the variable-length encoded integer
• the data payload (MDEV-12353 records); could be encrypted in their entirety

Skipped bytes (at least 5) would be indicated by the following:

• variable-length encoded integer of skipped_length << 2 | 1 << 1 | sequence_bit
• CRC of the variable-length encoded integer (not including the skipped bytes)

Pros: Recovery can determine more quickly that the end of the circular log was reached, thanks to the length, sequence bit and (nonzero) CRC being stored at the start.
Pros: More of the log could be encrypted (at the cost of recovery and backup restoration speed)
Cons: Increased storage overhead: sizeof(CRC)+log(length * 4) bytes. For length<32 bytes, no change of overhead.
Cons: If the encryption is based on the current LSN, then both encryption and the checksum would have to be computed while holding log_sys.mutex.

Log writing and synchronous flushing

For the bulk of the changes done by mini-transactions, we do not care about flushing. The file system can write log file blocks as it pleases.

Some state changes of the database must be made durable at a specific time. Examples include user transaction COMMIT, XA PREPARE, XA ROLLBACK, and (in case the binlog is not enabled) XA COMMIT.

Whenever we want to make a certain change durable, we must flush all log files up to the LSN of the mini-transaction commit that made the change.

If redo log is physically replicated to the buffer pools of physical replicas (like in Amazon Aurora or Alibaba PolarDB), then we should first write to the local log and only then to the replicas, and we should assume that the writes to the files will always eventually be durable. If that assumption is broken, then all servers would have to be restarted and perform crash recovery.

Crash recovery and backup

The previous two-stage parsing (log block validation and log record parsing) was replaced with a single stage. The separate 2-megabyte buffer recv_sys.buf is no longer needed, because the bytes of the log records will be stored contiguously, except when the log file wraps around from its end to the offset 12,288.

When the log file is memory-mapped, we will parse records directly from log_sys.buf that contains a view of the entire log file. For parsing the mini-transaction that wraps from the end of the file to the start, the record parser will use a special pointer wrapper. When not using memory-mapping, we will read from the log file to log_sys.buf in such a way that the records of each mini-transaction will be contiguous.

Crash-upgrade from earlier versions will not be supported. Before upgrading, the old server must have been shut down, or mariadb-backup --prepare must have been executed using an appropriate older version of the backup tool.

Starting up without ib_logfile0 will no longer be supported; see also MDEV-27199.