MySQL server version differs from MySQL client version -- should I fix this?

sneakyimp · 06-26-2014, 06:37 PM

I'm in the process of upgrading a server. I have chosen the latest Ubuntu LTS, 14.04 for installation on an Amazon EC2 instance. This is going well. However, upon installing phpmyadmin for db admin tasks, I see a warning:

Code:

Your PHP MySQL library version 5.5.37 differs from your MySQL server version 5.6.17. This may cause unpredictable behavior.

This is happening because my database server is an Amazon RDS instance running a different version of MySQL server than the client binaries installed on the EC2 instance.

Is this really a problem? The solutions as I see it are:
1) Ignore it, which I'm guessing will cause my heartache later when some weird problem happens that is hard to find.
2) Upgrade the server's client library (and php module) so that it uses MySQL 5.6.x. Aside from the difficulty of compiling from source, this also means that I have to manually recompile from source as bug fixes and new versions are released. I.e., I cannot rely on the Ubuntu package maintainers to keep on top of things and I'll have to do it myself. Verdict: Pain In The Ass (PITA).
3) Downgrade my RDS instance. While this is certainly much easier in the short term (literally just a matter of clicking around in a browser console), I find it sad to do so and wonder if I'll be missing any particularly effective new features.

Can anyone chime in on this? Thoughts? Advice? Etc?

eklavya · 06-27-2014, 12:44 AM

You already know the solutions.
You should not get any issue if you use command line but you are using phpmyadmin (I don't like it, I don't suggest it.) so there may be a problem because it is saying that's why it can create it.

Did you try?

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
sudo apt-get install php5-mysqli

sneakyimp · 06-27-2014, 01:16 PM

I've done apt-get update and then tried install mysql:

Code:

sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
php5-mysql is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

It's already installed. Trying to install php5-mysqli resulted in 'no installation candidate' error, but I did see that there's a separate package php5-mysqlnd. Googling the difference between mysql and mysqlnd yielded this page, which suggests that php 5.3 and higher would natively include support for mysqlnd.

This starts to get a bit puzzling because Ubuntu 14.04 includes php 5.5.9 apparently:

Code:

php -v
PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.2 (cli) (built: Jun 25 2014 17:17:37) 
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
    with Zend OPcache v7.0.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies

And my mysql client reports itself as 5.6.17:

Code:

 mysql --version
mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.6.17, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using  EditLine wrapper

And yet looking at the output of phpinfo, I see that its client version is reported as 5.5.37:

Code:

mysql

MySQL Support => enabled
Active Persistent Links => 0
Active Links => 0
Client API version => 5.5.37


mysqli

MysqlI Support => enabled
Client API library version => 5.5.37
Active Persistent Links => 0
Inactive Persistent Links => 0
Active Links => 0
Client API header version => 5.5.37


pdo_mysql

PDO Driver for MySQL => enabled
Client API version => 5.5.37

Wondering why the PHP mysql client version doesn't match the mysql-client version reported from the command line.

---------- Post added 06-27-14 at 11:17 AM ----------

Also: kind of dreading installing php 5.5 when this server may be running for the next five years!

Is there not some way to get the server to use the latest available client without taking upon myself the duty of continually recompiling from source?