How do you use MySQL InnoDB tables on OS X?

Question

I had trouble using InnoDB MySQL 5.0 on OS X because of a my.cnf settings issue. Listing the gotchas in case it helps anyone:

If InnoDB is disabled, check the error log (hostname.err, in the data directory). I had an empty setting which I changed:

 innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend

Hope this helps someone. I was running a rails app and getting errors with my sessions table.

Answer 1

It actually shouldn't be required. InnoDB will automatically create two transaction log files and ibdata1 in /usr/local/mysql/data on Mac OS X.