How to safely change MySQL innodb variable 'innodb_log_file_size'?

So I'm fairly new to tuning InnoDB. I'm slowly changing tables (where necessary) from MyIsam to InnoDB. I've got about 100MB in innodb, so I increased the innodb_buffer_pool_size variable to 128MB:

mysql> show variables like 'innodb_buffer%';
+-------------------------+-----------+
| Variable_name           | Value     |
+-------------------------+-----------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 134217728 |
+-------------------------+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

When I went to change the innodb_log_file_size value (example my.cnf on mysql's innodb configuration page comments to change the log file size to 25% of the buffer size. So now my my.cnf looks like this:

# innodb
innodb_buffer_pool_size = 128M
innodb_log_file_size = 32M

When I restart the server, I get this error:


110216 9:48:41 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M

110216 9:48:41 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool

InnoDB: Error: log file ./ib_logfile0 is of different size 0 5242880 bytes

InnoDB: than specified in the .cnf file 0 33554432 bytes!

110216 9:48:41 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.

110216 9:48:41 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.

So my question: Is it safe to delete the old log_files, or is there another method to change the innodb_log_file_size variable?

Yes it is safe to delete the log file once mysqld has been shutdown

In light of this, just perform the following steps:

mysql -uroot -p... -e"SET GLOBAL innodb_fast_shutdown = 0"
service mysql stop
mv /var/lib/mysql/ib_logfile[01] /tmp
service mysql start

Starting up mysqld will recreate ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1

Give it a Try !!!

UPDATE 2011-10-20 16:40 EDT

It cleanly page out all data in the InnoDB Buffer Pool prior to redoing the Log Files, you should set this option about 1 hour before shutdown:

SET GLOBAL innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct = 0;

By default, innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct is 75 (MySQL 5.5+) or 90 (prior to MySQL 5.5). Setting this to zero keeps the number of dirty pages under 1% of the InnoDB Buffer Pool. Performing service mysql stop does this anyway. In addition, a shutdown will finish up any remaining items in the redo log. To keep to this option just add it to /etc/my.cnf:

[mysqld]
innodb_max_dirty_pages_pct = 0

UPDATE 2013-04-19 16:16 EDT

I updated my answer a little more with innodb_fast_shutdown because I used to restart mysql and stop mysql to do this. Now, this one-step is vital because every transaction uncommitted may have other moving parts within and outside of the InnoDB Transaction Logs (See InnoDB Infrastructure).

Please note that setting innodb_fast_shutdown to 2 would clean the logs out as well but more moving parts still exist and gets picked on Crash Recovery during mysqld's startup. Setting of 0 is best.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#1261, answer score: 94