myisampack

myisampack

myisampack is a tool for compressing MyISAM tables. The resulting tables are read-only, and usually about 40% to 70% smaller. It is run as follows:

myisampack [options] file_name [file_name2...]

The file_name is the .MYI index file. The extension can be omitted, although keeping it permits wildcards, such as:

myisampack *.MYI

...to compress all the files.

myisampack compresses each column separately, and, when the resulting data is read, only the individual rows and columns required need to be decompressed, allowing for quicker reading.

Once a table has been packed, use myisamchk -rq (the quick and recover options) to rebuild its indexes.

myisampack does not support partitioned tables.

Options

The following variables can be set while passed as commandline options tomyisampack, or set with a [myisampack] section in yourmy.cnf file.

Option
Description

-b, --backup

Make a backup of the table as table_name.OLD.

--character-sets-dir=name

Directory where character sets are.

-

## , --debug[=name]

Output debug log. Often this is 'd:t:o,filename'.

-f, --force

Force packing of table even if it gets bigger or if tempfile exists.

-j, --join=name

Join all given tables into 'new_table_name'. All tables must have identical layouts.

-?, --help

Display help and exit.

-s, --silent

Only write output when an error occurs

-T, --tmpdir=name

Use temporary directory to store temporary table.

-t, --test

Don't pack table, only test packing it.

-v, --verbose

Write info about progress and packing result. Use multiple -v flags for more verbosity.

-V, --version

Output version information and exit.

-w, --wait

Wait and retry if table is in use.

Uncompressing

To uncompress a table compressed with myisampack, use themyisamchk -u option.

Examples

> myisampack /var/lib/mysql/test/posts
Compressing /var/lib/mysql/test/posts.MYD: (1680 records)
- Calculating statistics
- Compressing file
37.71%
> myisamchk -rq /var/lib/mysql/test/posts
- check record delete-chain
- recovering (with sort) MyISAM-table '/var/lib/mysql/test/posts'
Data records: 1680
- Fixing index 1
- Fixing index 2

See Also

This page is licensed: CC BY-SA / Gnu FDL

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