Given that, should I treat an upgrade from 11.1.2 -> 11.4.2 as a "major version upgrade" or given the "rolling" nature of these in-between versions, is it safe to treat this update like a "minor version upgrade" where I can just download the 11.4.2 installer, run it and let it take care of everything?

We've changed this recently, so the answer is longer than I'd prefer it to be. 11.1 and 11.2 are Short-Term Release, supported for one year (that's the short term). They aren't rolling and you should basically treat 11.1->11.4 as a major upgrade. Depending on your linux distro the package manager might refuse to do an automatic major upgrade.

11.3 and up (except 11.4) are rolling, indeed. If you decide to roll, the upgrade path is 11.3.2->11.4.2->11.5.2->11.6.2, this is minor upgrade, basically, packages should upgrade automatically.

11.4 is LTS, if you stay on it the upgrade path is 11.4.2->11.4.3->11.4.4... etc, these are patch upgrades, always were automatic.

Following up -

I just treated it like a major version update....

1. Stopped Service
2. Copied database / config directory as backup
3. Installed 11.4
4. Chose upgrade existing
5. Followed update procedure prompts
6. Profit!

This worked great - no issues!

However I tried running my dump file import command and it failed with the same error!
I did some more digging and then it became clear when I ran `mysql --version` and saw that the client binary that was running was a very old version back from when I had 10.6 installed and never full removed it from my machine!

It turns out, I still had the 10.6/bin directory in my environment path so when I would run the mysql command line tool it was running an outdated client, rather than the version that came with the server I was actively using!

I probably didn't need to update my local server at all, rather just needed to fix my path and get rid of the old installations.... Though I'm not complaining, at least now I'm on an LTS release <3!

@Sergie

Thanks for the reply!

My local server/client is from MariaDB 11.1.2 - Which I now see is a Short Term Release.

Looking at my upgrade path (again on windows), I can go to 11.2.x, 11.3.x, or 11.4.x

Looking over the notes, it seems like 11.2.x and 11.3.x were kind of like stepping stone releases to get to the current 11.4.x long term release version.

Given that, should I treat an upgrade from 11.1.2 -> 11.4.2 as a "major version upgrade" or given the "rolling" nature of these in-between versions, is it safe to treat this update like a "minor version upgrade" where I can just download the 11.4.2 installer, run it and let it take care of everything?

I appreciate your insight! I'm much more of the "programmer" than the "server admin" so I don't want to cause myself a bunch of grief by doing this wrong! Thanks

you'll need to upgrade your local server, but you don't need to update 10.6.18.

in fact, you only need to update your local client, not even the server, but updating everything might be simpler,

Sorry guys, I'm a bit confused on what I need to do to resolve the issue for myself. My server is currently running 10.6.18 which is affected. My local dev-server is running 11.1.2.

My bug occurs when trying to import a dump created on the server (10.6.18) to my local server (11.1.2).

If I upgrade my server to 10.6.19, will the dump files return to compatibility with my local server or will I need to update my local server as well?