1778
MariaDBERRORNotableDDLHIGH confidence

ALTER TABLE operation not supported

Production Risk

Medium — DDL rejected; requires a different approach.

What this means

The requested ALTER TABLE operation is not supported by the storage engine or MySQL version in use.

Why it happens
  1. 1Attempting an ALTER TABLE feature not available for the table's storage engine.
  2. 2Using online DDL syntax (ALGORITHM=INSTANT/INPLACE) for an operation that requires COPY.
How to reproduce
trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
ALTER TABLE tbl ALGORITHM=INSTANT, CHANGE COLUMN old_col new_col INT; -- not always instant

expected output

ERROR 1778 (0A000): ALTER TABLE operation is not supported with the specified ALGORITHM.

Fix

Use ALGORITHM=COPY to force a full table rebuild

Use ALGORITHM=COPY to force a full table rebuild
ALTER TABLE tbl ALGORITHM=COPY, CHANGE COLUMN old_col new_col INT;

Why this works

COPY algorithm always works but locks the table during the operation.

What not to do

Version notes

Sources
Official documentation ↗

MySQL 8.0 — 1778 ER_ALTER_OPERATION_NOT_SUPPORTED

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