I encountered this because I use MariaDB 10.5 (not my choice, and I know it's not officially supported by gh-ost).

Thought I'd mention that the commit that introduced this change is actually 3f44e043, not the one mentioned by OP (although it's the same line OP saw).

For my needs, I edited go/mysql/connection.go, replaced transaction_isolation with tx_isolation, and rebuilt gh-ost from source.

For those trapped on MySQL 5.7, downgrading to gh-ost 1.1.5 works:

https://github.com/github/gh-ost/releases/tag/v1.1.5

What is the solution to this? Version 1.1.6 is unusable on MariaDB, and 1.1.5 can't convert tables to UTF-8 space, per #1158...

What is the solution to this? Version 1.1.6 is unusable on MariaDB, and 1.1.5 can't convert tables to UTF-8 space, per #1158...

My solution was to hexedit the gh-ost binary like so:

0038E800   73 65 74 3D  75 74 66 2D  38 74 72 61  6E 73 61 63  set=utf-8transac
0038E810   74 69 6F 6E  5F 69 73 6F  6C 61 74 69  6F 6E 3D 25  tion_isolation=%
0038E820   71 75 6E 65  78 70 65 63  74 65 64 20  62 75 66 66  qunexpected buff

to:

0038E800   73 65 74 3D  75 74 66 2D  38 74 78 5F  69 73 6F 6C  set=utf-8tx_isol
0038E810   61 74 69 6F  6E 20 20 20  20 20 20 20  20 20 3D 25  ation         =%
0038E820   71 75 6E 65  78 70 65 63  74 65 64 20  62 75 66 66  qunexpected buff

But that's a pretty lame workaround, though I was able to do the character set migration. Would love to see this addressed, even if it's with a command-line parameter.

@morgo / @Uplink03 / @sj26 / @suwalski this should be resolved by #1441. If you could validate this before/after that's merged that would be helpful 🙇

EDIT: you'll need to set --transaction-isolation READ-COMMITTED on the command line

@morgo / @Uplink03 / @sj26 / @suwalski this should be resolved by #1441. If you could validate this before/after that's merged that would be helpful 🙇

EDIT: you'll need to set --transaction-isolation READ-COMMITTED on the command line

I'm away from the computer so I can't build the code, but I had a look at the diff for that PR and unless I didn't see it, it's not addressing this issue.

The problem isn't that the transaction isolation value was wrong or hard coded or something, but that the settings variable name was changed between database server versions. gh-ost is using the new name, and so far the only way to make it use the old name is to patch the file I mentioned in my comment.

This is what I said:

I edited go/mysql/connection.go, replaced transaction_isolation with tx_isolation, and rebuilt gh-ost from source.

If that was addressed, it's not in the mentioned PR.

As far as I can get on my mobile GitHub app right now, that file hasn't changed in two years.

I'll try to have a think about adding a parameter that can specify the name of the setting on request or in config. If I come up with an idea I like, and nobody does it before I do (timeline undetermined), I should submit a PR. It shouldn't be too much work, right? (Famous last words)