Unable to change engine to MyISAM in MySQL I have  installed MySQL 5.6.10 on Mac OS X 10.6.5. My issue is that MySQL is using InnoDB as its default engine.

I have checked following engines are supported in MySQL:

show engines\G


*************************** 1. row ***************************
      Engine: FEDERATED
     Support: NO
     Comment: Federated MySQL storage engine
Transactions: NULL
          XA: NULL
  Savepoints: NULL
*************************** 2. row ***************************
      Engine: MRG_MYISAM
     Support: YES
     Comment: Collection of identical MyISAM tables
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 3. row ***************************
      Engine: MyISAM
     Support: YES
     Comment: MyISAM storage engine
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 4. row ***************************
      Engine: BLACKHOLE
     Support: YES
     Comment: /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears)
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 5. row ***************************
      Engine: CSV
     Support: YES
     Comment: CSV storage engine
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 6. row ***************************
      Engine: MEMORY
     Support: YES
     Comment: Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 7. row ***************************
      Engine: ARCHIVE
     Support: YES
     Comment: Archive storage engine
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO
*************************** 8. row ***************************
      Engine: InnoDB
     Support: DEFAULT
     Comment: Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys
Transactions: YES
          XA: YES
  Savepoints: YES
*************************** 9. row ***************************
      Engine: PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA
     Support: YES
     Comment: Performance Schema
Transactions: NO
          XA: NO
  Savepoints: NO


I want to change it to MyISAM, so I have changed the setting in my.cnf:

[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=MyISAM


After that I restarted MySQL from the system preferences. But if I check check the engines again and create a table, it is still being created with InnoDB, not MyISAM.

Can anyone tell me how would I change it to MyISAM?

Here is my my.cnf file content:

# For advice on how to change settings please see
# http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/server-configuration-defaults.html

[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=MyISAM

# Remove leading # and set to the amount of RAM for the most important data
# cache in MySQL. Start at 70% of total RAM for dedicated server, else 10%.
# innodb_buffer_pool_size = 128M

# Remove leading # to turn on a very important data integrity option: logging
# changes to the binary log between backups.
# log_bin

# These are commonly set, remove the # and set as required.
# basedir = .....
# datadir = .....
# port = .....
# server_id = .....
# socket = .....

# Remove leading # to set options mainly useful for reporting servers.
# The server defaults are faster for transactions and fast SELECTs.
# Adjust sizes as needed, experiment to find the optimal values.
# join_buffer_size = 128M
# sort_buffer_size = 2M
# read_rnd_buffer_size = 2M

# sql_mode=STRICT_TRANS_TABLES
MySQL 5.6.10 is quite new to me as well, so bear with me on this answer

I installed MySQL 5.6.10 on a Linux VM

I added default-storage-engine=MyISAM to my.cnf and restarted MySQL

It went from this:

mysql&gt; show engines;
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| Engine             | Support | Comment                                                        | Transactions | XA   | Savepoints |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| MyISAM             | YES     | MyISAM storage engine                                          | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| CSV                | YES     | CSV storage engine                                             | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MRG_MYISAM         | YES     | Collection of identical MyISAM tables                          | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| BLACKHOLE          | YES     | /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears) | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MEMORY             | YES     | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables      | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | YES     | Performance Schema                                             | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| ARCHIVE            | YES     | Archive storage engine                                         | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| InnoDB             | DEFAULT | Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys     | YES          | YES  | YES        |
| FEDERATED          | NO      | Federated MySQL storage engine                                 | NULL         | NULL | NULL       |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
9 rows in set (0.00 sec)

to 

mysql&gt; show engines;
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| Engine             | Support | Comment                                                        | Transactions | XA   | Savepoints |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
| MyISAM             | DEFAULT | MyISAM storage engine                                          | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| CSV                | YES     | CSV storage engine                                             | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MRG_MYISAM         | YES     | Collection of identical MyISAM tables                          | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| BLACKHOLE          | YES     | /dev/null storage engine (anything you write to it disappears) | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| MEMORY             | YES     | Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables      | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA | YES     | Performance Schema                                             | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| ARCHIVE            | YES     | Archive storage engine                                         | NO           | NO   | NO         |
| InnoDB             | YES     | Supports transactions, row-level locking, and foreign keys     | YES          | YES  | YES        |
| FEDERATED          | NO      | Federated MySQL storage engine                                 | NULL         | NULL | NULL       |
+--------------------+---------+----------------------------------------------------------------+--------------+------+------------+
9 rows in set (0.00 sec)


No problem.

If you placed

default-storage-engine=MyISAM


in my.cnf, restarted MySQL and still the default is InnoDB, then there is only one explanation: You placed default-storage-engine=MyISAM in the wrong part of my.cnf

I once caught a mistake like that in a ServerFault question : Set group_concat_max_len permanently (MySQL config)

Make sure the option is under the [mysqld] section of my.cnf

[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=MyISAM


SUGGESTION

I think MyISAM in MySQL 5.6.10 is run as a plugin. Check your error logs for any plugin errors.

Also, do this:

In one SSH session, tail -f /var/log/mysqld.log

In another SSH session, service mysql restart

Look for any plugin messages associated with MyISAM. For example, note that when I ran a shutdown I saw these messages:

2013-02-26 15:20:13 1725 [Note] InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 1600309
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'CSV'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MEMORY'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MRG_MYISAM'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MyISAM'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'sha256_password'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'mysql_old_password'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'mysql_native_password'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'binlog'
2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

130226 15:20:15 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/lib/mysql/chtn-web2v.pid ended


Note that MyISAM is a plugin. If you do not see anything like

2013-02-26 15:20:15 1725 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MyISAM'


your MyISAM plugin may have an issue with the Mac OS X version of MySQL.