I've been researching this for a few hours with no luck. Basically it looks like my server's my.cnf file isn't being read at all. I've searched my server, and there's only one my.cnf file on it, located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf. Its ownership is root:root. I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 64bit on a Linode.com server. I have the latest versions of MySQL and PHP installed. I've edited the my.cnf file, commented out "skip-innodb", and have set innodb to be the default storage engine using default-storage-engine = innodb And then restarted mysql. But when I do show engines, MyISAM is still coming up as the default engine. Also - none of the innodb settings I've added to the my.cnf file are being read. For example, I have this in my.cnf: innodb_buffer_pool_size=4G But in phpmyadmin, InnoDB is showing as having a buffer pool size of 8,192 KiB. Similarly, I have this in the my.cnf: innodb_data-file_path = ibdata1:500M:autoextend But in phpmyadmin, it's reading as ibdata1:10M:autoextend. It doesn't look like MyISAM info is being read from the my.cnf file either. The my.cnf file has skip-external-locking queried out, but it's showing as "on" in phpmyadmin. So - yeah, it looks like nothing in the my.cnf file is being read at all. But the server still works. I'm running a Drupal site on it and it seems to operate fine. So mysql seems to be drawing default settings from... some mysterious secret location. Any idea how I can make mysql see and use this my.cnf file? Actually, wait - it looks like it may be being read, not sure. I checked the error.log and found this: 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Cannot find or open table databasename/cache_apachesolr from the internal data dictionary of InnoDB though the .frm file for the table exists. Maybe you have deleted and recreated InnoDB data files but have forgotten to delete the corresponding .frm files of InnoDB tables, or you have moved .frm files to another database? or, the table contains indexes that this version of the engine doesn't support. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-troubleshooting.html how you can resolve the problem. InnoDB: Error: auto-extending data file ./ibdata1 is of a different size InnoDB: 640 pages (rounded down to MB) than specified in the .cnf file: InnoDB: initial 32000 pages, max 0 (relevant if non-zero) pages! InnoDB: Could not open or create data files. InnoDB: If you tried to add new data files, and it failed here, InnoDB: you should now edit innodb_data_file_path in my.cnf back InnoDB: to what it was, and remove the new ibdata files InnoDB created InnoDB: in this failed attempt. InnoDB only wrote those files full of InnoDB: zeros, but did not yet use them in any way. But be careful: do not InnoDB: remove old data files which contain your precious data! 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error. 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed. 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] /usr/sbin/mysqld: unknown variable 'innodb_lock_wait_timout=50' 101128 4:28:52 [ERROR] Aborting 101128 4:28:52 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete