Valerii Kravchuk added a comment - 2018-12-26 14:26 It seems even smaller CREATE TABLE (359791 bytes in .sql form) with many (4000) partitions by LIST of long strings (content can not be shared in public) can not be successfully processed: C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.3\bin>mysql -uroot -proot -P3316 test <d:\big_table.sql ERROR 1967 (HY000) at line 1: The definition for table `t_2277` is too big Moreover, it seems the limit is not enforced so strict when ALTER TABLE is executed to add partitions one by one, as that way the table can be created that later can NOT be recreated from the output of SHOW CREATE TABLE.

Sergei Golubchik added a comment - 2019-01-03 10:56 Could you please provide a test case how ALTER TABLE allows to bypess the frm size limit?

Valerii Kravchuk added a comment - 2019-01-03 15:08 I was my assumption that ALTER may allow that. In fact the following test on 10.1.34 shows ALTER respects the limit: MariaDB [test]> create table tp (id varchar(36), dt datetime, rest varchar(36)) engine=InnoDB partition by list columns(id) (partition p0 values in ('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbb00')); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.37 sec)   openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ for i in `seq 1 8000`; do echo $i; bin/mysql -uroot --socket=/tmp/mariadb.sock test -e"alter table tp add partition (partition p$i values in ('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb$i'))"; done   ... 4105 ERROR 1967 (HY000) at line 1: The definition for table `tp` is too big 4106 ERROR 1967 (HY000) at line 1: The definition for table `tp` is too big 4107 ... That for loop eventually fails after creating 4084 partitions: ... PARTITION p4083 VALUES IN ('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb4083') ENGINE = InnoDB, PARTITION p4084 VALUES IN ('aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabb4084') ENGINE = InnoDB) */ 1 row in set (0.19 sec)   MariaDB [test]> select 512*1024; +----------+ | 512*1024 | +----------+ | 524288 | +----------+ 1 row in set (0.03 sec) The resulting .frm file is withing limits and I can dump and restore the table on 10.1.x: openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ ls -l data/test/tp.frm -rw-rw---- 1 openxs openxs 524235 січ 3 16:06 data/test/tp.frm openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ bin/mysqldump -uroot --socket=/tmp/mariadb.sock test tp >/tmp/tp.sql openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ ls -l /tmp/tp.sql -rw-rw-r-- 1 openxs openxs 346870 січ 3 16:24 /tmp/tp.sql openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ bin/mysql -uroot --socket=/tmp/mariadb.sock test2 </tmp/tp.sql openxs@ao756:~/dbs/maria10.1$ But when I try to restore the same dump on 10.3.7 on Windows, it fails: C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.3\bin>mysql -uroot -proot -P3316 test <h:\tp.sql ERROR 1967 (HY000) at line 25: The definition for table `tp` is too big See tp.sql uploaded. To summarize, we have two problems confirmed by my test: 1. 512K limit is too small (so we need it increased). 2. ALTER on 10.1.x allows to create partitioned table that can not be re-created from the dump on 10.3.7.