Fun with Bugs #87 - On MySQL Bug Reports I am Subscribed to, Part XXI

After a 3 months long break I'd like to continue reviewing MySQL bug reports that I am subscribed to. This issue is devoted to bug reports I've considered interesting to follow in May, 2019:

• Bug #95215 - "Memory lifetime of variables between check and update incorrectly managed". As demonstrated by Manuel Ung, there is a problem with all InnoDB MYSQL_SYSVAR_STR variables that can be dynamically updated. Valgrind allows to highlight it.
• Bug #95218 - "Virtual generated column altered unexpectedly when table definition changed". This weird bug (that does not seem to be repeatable on MariaDB 10.3.7 with proper test case modifications like removing NOT NULL and collation settings from virtual column) was reported by Joseph Choi. Unfortunately we do not see any documented attempt to check if MySQL 8.0.x is also affected. My quick test shows MySQL 8.0.17 is NOT affected, but I'd prefer to see check copy/pasted as a public comment to the bug.
• Bug #95230 - "SELECT ... FOR UPDATE on a gap in repeatable read should be exclusive lock". There are more chances to get a deadlock with InnoDB than one might expect... I doubt this report from Domas Mituzas is a feature request. It took him some extra efforts to insist on the point and get it verified even as S4.
• Bug #95231 - "LOCK=SHARED rejected contrary to specification". This bug report from Monty Solomon ended up as a documentation request. The documentation and the implementation are not aligned, and it was decided NOT to change the parser to match documented syntax. But why it is still "Verified" then? Should it take months to correct the fine manual?
• Bug #95232 - "The text of error message 1846 and the online DDL doc table should be updated". Yet another bug report from Monty Solomon. Some (but not ALL) partition specific ALTER TABLE operations do not yet support LOCK clause.
• Bug #95233 - "check constraint doesn't consider IF function that returns boolean a boolean fun". As pointed out by Daniel Black, IF() function in a check constraint isn't considered a boolean type. He had contributed a patch to fix this, but based on comments it's not clear if it's going to be accepted and used "as is". The following test shows that MariaDB 10.3 is not affected:
  

  C:\Program Files\MariaDB 10.3\bin>mysql -uroot -proot -P3316 test
  Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
  Your MariaDB connection id is 9
  Server version: 10.3.7-MariaDB-log mariadb.org binary distribution
  
  Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
  
  Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
  MariaDB [test]> create table t1 (source enum('comment','post') NOT NULL, comment_id int unsigned, post_id int unsigned);
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.751 sec)

  MariaDB [test]> alter table t1 add check(IF(source = 'comment', comment_id IS NOT NULL AND post_id IS NULL, post_id IS NOT NULL AND comment_id IS NULL));
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (1.239 sec)
  Records: 0  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

• Bug #95235 - "ABRT:Can't generate a unique log-filename binlog.(1-999), while rotating the bin". Yet another bug report from Daniel Black. When MySQL 8.0.16 is built with gcc 9.0.x abort is triggered in the MTR suite on the binlog.binlog_restart_server_with_exhausted_index_value test.
• Bug #95249 - "stop slave permanently blocked". This bug was reported by Wei Zhao, who had contributed a patch.
• Bug #95256 - "MySQL 8.0.16 SYSTEM USER can be changed by DML". MySQL 8.0.16 had introduced an new privilege, SYSTEM_USER. MySQL manual actually says:
  

  "The protection against modification by regular accounts that is afforded to system accounts by the SYSTEM_USER privilege does not apply to regular accounts that have privileges on the mysql system schema and thus can directly modify the grant tables in that schema. For full protection, do not grant mysql schema privileges to regular accounts."

  But the report that a user with a privilege to execute DML on the mysql.GLOBAL_GRANTS table from Zhao Jianwei was accepted and verified. I hope Oracle engineers will finally make up their mind and decide either to fix this or to close this report as "Not a bug". I've subscribed in a hope for some fun around this decision making.
• Bug #95269 - "binlog_row_image=minimal causes assertion failure". This assertion failure happens in debug build when one of standard MTR test cases, rpl.rpl_gis_ddl or rpl.rpl_window_functions is executed with --binlog-row-image=minimal option. In such cases I always wonder what is the reason for a failure NOT to be noted by Oracle MySQL QA and somehow fixed before Community users notice it? Either they don't run tests on debug builds with all possible combinations, or do not care to fix such failures (and thus should suffer from known failures in other test runs). I do not like any of these options, honestly. The bug was reported by Song Libing.
• Bug #95272 - "Potential InnoDB SPATIAL INDEX corruption during root page split". This bug was reported by Albert Hu based on Valgrind report when running the test innodb.instant_alter. Do they run MTR tests under on Valgrind or ASan builds in Oracle? I assume they do, but then why Community users are reporting such cases first? Note that related MariaDB's bug, MDEV-13942, is fixed in 10.2.24+ and 10.3.15+.
• Bug #95285 - "InnoDB: Page [page id: space=1337, page number=39] still fixed or dirty". This assertion failure that happens during normal shutdown was reported by LUCA TRUFFARELLI. There are chances that this is a regression bug (without a regression tag), as it does not happen for reporter on MySQL 5.7.21.
• Bug #95319 - "SHOW SLAVE HOST coalesces certain server_id's into one". This bug was reported by Lalit Choudhary from Percona based on original findings by Glyn Astill.
• Bug #95416 - "ZERO Date is both NULL and NOT NULL". This funny bug report was submitted Morgan Tocker. Manual actually explains that it's intended behavior (MariaDB 10.3.7 works the same way as MySQL), but it's still funny and unexpected, and the bug report remains "Verified".
• Bug #95478 - "CREATE TABLE LIKE does not honour ROW_FORMAT." I'd like to add "...when it was not defined explicitly for the original table". The problem was reported by Jean-François Gagné and ended up as a verified feature request. See also this my post on the details of where row_format is stored and is not stored for InnoDB tables...
• Bug #95484 - "EXCHANGE PARTITION works wrong/werid with different ROW_FORMAT". Another bug report by Jean-François Gagné related to the previous one. He had shown that it's actually possible to get partitions with different row formats in the same InnoDB table in MySQL 5.7.26, but not in the most natural way. It seems the problem may be fixed in 5.7.27 (by the fix for another, internally reported bug), but the bug remains "Verified".

There are some more bugs reported in May 2019 that I was interested in, but let me stop for now. Later in May I've got a chance to spend some days off in Barcelona, without any single MySQL bug report opened for day.

I like this view of Barcelona way more than any MySQL bugs review, including this one.

To summarize:

1. Oracle engineers who process bugs still sometimes do not care to check if all supported major versions are affected and/or share the results of such checks in public. Instead, some of them care to argue about severity of the bug report, test case details etc.
2. We still see bug reports that originates from existing, well known MTR test cases runs under Valgrind or in debug builds with some non-default options set. I do not have any good reason in mind to explain why these are NOT reported by Oracle's internal QA first.
3. Surely some regression bugs still get verified without the regression tag added.

I truly hope my talk "Problems with Oracle's Way of MySQL Bugs Database Maintenance" will be accepted for Percona Live Europe 2019 conference (at least as a lightning talk) and I'll get another chance to speak about the problems highlighted above, and more. There are some "metabugs" in the way Oracle handles MySQL bug report, and these should be discussed and fixed, for the benefits of MySQL quality and all MySQL users and customers.