[Koha-devel] Update from Koha 19.11 to 21.05 terminating because "Row size too large"

[Michael Kuhn]

Hi

Today I updated our host from Debian GNU/Linux 9 with Koha 19.11.00 
first to Debian GNU/Linux 10, then to Koha 21.05.01. When running 
"apt-get install koha-common" the process terminated showing the 
following messages:

### BEGIN #########################

Upgrade to 19.12.00.052 done [18:30:04]: Bug 21443 - Add ability to 
exclude holidays when calculating rentals fees by time period
{UNKNOWN}: DBI Exception: DBD::mysql::db do failed: Row size too large. 
The maximum row size for the used table type, not counting BLOBs, is 
8126. This includes storage overhead, check the manual. You have to 
change some columns to TEXT or BLOBs [for Statement "ALTER TABLE 
borrowers ADD COLUMN autorenew_checkouts TINYINT(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 1 
AFTER anonymized"]  at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Schema.pm line 1118.
	DBIx::Class::Schema::throw_exception(Koha::Schema=HASH(0x30abec0), "DBI 
Exception: DBD::mysql::db do failed: Row size too large. "...) called at 
/usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage.pm line 113
	DBIx::Class::Storage::throw_exception(DBIx::Class::Storage::DBI::mysql=HASH(0x3aa549c), "DBI Exception: DBD::mysql::db do failed: Row size too large. "...) called at /usr/share/perl5/DBIx/Class/Storage/DBI.pm line 1501
	DBIx::Class::Storage::DBI::__ANON__("DBD::mysql::db do failed: Row size 
too large. The maximum row"..., DBI::db=HASH(0x3ee6314), undef) called 
at 
/usr/share/koha/intranet/cgi-bin/installer/data/mysql/updatedatabase.pl 
line 21313

dpkg: error processing package koha-common (--configure):
  installed koha-common package post-installation script subprocess 
returned error exit status 11
Processing triggers for systemd (241-7~deb10u7) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
  koha-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Script done, file is /tmp/apt-get_install_koha-common_20210712.txt

### END #########################

This looks a lot like 
https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=24986 (Maximum 
row size reached soon for borrowers and deletedborrowers) or 
https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=28267 
(Koha-common package upgrade problem from 20.05.xx to 20.11.04-1) but 
it's not exactly the same.

According to 
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/troubleshooting-row-size-too-large-errors-with-innodb/ 
I ran the described script "rowsize.sh" which showed me the following 7 
tables with row size too large.

  aqbooksellers
  biblioitems
  borrower_modifications
  borrowers
  deletedbiblioitems
  deletedborrowers
  z3950servers

One solution seems to be to alter the row format of these tables from 
"Compact" to "Dynamic" so I did that for all seven tables.

  ALTER TABLE aqbooksellers ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC;
  etc

After running "apt-get install koha-common" again, the process continued 
with

  Upgrade to 19.12.00.053 done [19:19:28]: Bug 24476 - Allow patrons to 
opt-out of autorenewal

and ran to the end.

  Upgrade to 21.05.01.003 done [19:19:38]: Koha 21.05.01 release
  Error: the selected language is already installed. Try --update if you 
want to re-install it.
  ERROR: an error was found when updating 'de-DE' translations. Please 
manually
  run 'koha-translate --update de-DE'. Run man koha-translate for more 
options.

Except of the error regarding the "selected language" which I have 
described in another e-mail to koha-devel, everything seems to work fine.

Still I'm asking myself if I should open another bug report about "Row 
size too large" since the problem does not to be solved by Bug 24986 
("Pushed to master for 20.11") or the pending Bug 28267.

Also I'm not sure what consequences the changed row format "Dynamic" for 
these 7 tables might have.

Best wishes: Michael
--
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