MySQL configuration¶

Redmine using MySQL 5.6, 5.7, 8.0, and 8.1 as database backend has known issues in case of concurrent modifications to the issue nested set, i.e. by parallel modification of various issues' parent_id). More details can be found in issue #39437 and all the related issues to that ticket.

Redmine higher or equal with 5.1.1 contains important fixes to mitigate this issue (r22458, r22459, and r22460), but those fixes also require changing the transaction_isolation to READ COMMITTED in order to properly work. The default MySQL transaction isolation level is REPEATABLE READ according to the official documentation. For MySQL version 5.7.20 or older, the setting is tx_isolation instead of transaction_isolation.

There are at least two ways to set this in a persistent way:

1. Change Redmine database configuration file

Add to database.yml configuration file the key variables with transaction_isolation: "READ-COMMITTED" under it as below:

production:
  adapter: mysql2
  database: redmine
  host: localhost
  [...]
  variables:
    transaction_isolation: "READ-COMMITTED" 

2. Change transaction_isolation in the MySQL configuration file on the server

transaction_isolation="READ-COMMITTED" 

• The path to this file depends on the operating system, for example, in Ubuntu is /etc/mysql/conf.d/mysql.cnf.
• Changing this setting, requires a server restart. If you don't want to restart the server, the setting can be applied also at the runtime by running the following query: SET GLOBAL TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED;, but it is important to make also the change in the configuration file in order to persist the setting after a restart.
• All major cloud providers allow changing this setting from the cloud administration page.

As with any other change made to a production system, is it strongly recommended to test this change before making it in production. In the case of a more advanced setup with replica, this change may also change the binary log format of your server because only row-based binary logging is supported with the READ COMMITTED isolation level.