How to Disable InnoDB On MySQL 5.5 and MariaDB

 

InnoDB is a MySQL storage engine. As of MySQL 5.5, InnoDB became the default storage engine instead of MyISAM.
Disabling InnoDB can be helpful, especially on low end boxes which has a low amount of memory.

Disabling InnoDB on Older Versions

On CentOS open /etc/my.cnf

vi /etc/my.cnf

On Debian and Ubuntu it’s usually located in /etc/mysql/my.cnf

vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf

In [mysqld] section, add:

[mysqld]
skip-innodb

Restart mysql:

service mysql restart

 

Disabling InnoDB on MySQL 5.5 or MariaDB

As of mySQL 5.5, InnoDB is the default storage engine. You will have to set MyISAM or any other engine as the default engine before disabling InnoDB. To do this, edit the same file as above “my.cnf”, and under [mysqld] section add:

[mysqld]
skip-innodb
default-storage-engine=MyISAM

InnoDB has many advantages over MyISAM, but in some cases when the amount of RAM on the server is low, disabling InnoDB can reduce the memory usage drastically.

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