Increasing column from VARCHAR(255) in master/slave setup We have replication set up on some MyISAM servers, in a master/save scenario, MySQL v5.1.

One of the columns is currently declared as VARCHAR(255). We want to increase this to VARCHAR(512).

We have one master and 4 slaves. What is the best scenario to make the change.

If we do this:

ALTER TABLE item MODIFY url VARCHAR(512)


should that be ok, as long as we update the slaves first and then the master, or may it complain and it's best to do them all at once? Should I stop the slaves?

I've tried the update on a dev machine which takes about 10 mins, but it doesn't have replication set there. So looking for any flaws in my thinking.

Or looking further, does ALTER TABLE get replicated, and that's all I would need to do on the master?
In a replication environment, for an ALTER that takes a long time, I recommend this:


On one slave:  Take out of rotation (keep clients from using it); perform the `ALTER; put back into rotation.
Repeat for other slaves.
SET @@session.sql_bin_log = 0 so it won't replicate; do the ALTER; set that back to 1.


That way, Slave users will not be impacted; Master user may be impacted.

With Galera / PXC, you would use "RSU" (Rolling Slave Update) and have zero downtime (but have to do it manually in a similar manner).

You need to upgrade to 5.6.  With it many ALTERs (probably including your case) can use the fast ALGORITHM=INPLACE.