Beginning with MySQL 4.0, InnoDB is enabled by default, so the following information applies only to MySQL 3.23.

InnoDB tables are included in the MySQL source distribution starting from 3.23.34a and are activated in the MySQL-Max binaries of the 3.23 series. For Windows, the MySQL-Max binaries are included in the standard distribution.

If you have downloaded a binary version of MySQL that includes support for InnoDB, simply follow the instructions of the MySQL manual for installing a binary version of MySQL. If you already have MySQL 3.23 installed, the simplest way to install MySQL-Max is to replace the executable mysqld server with the corresponding executable from the MySQL-Max distribution. MySQL and MySQL-Max differ only in the server executable. See the section called “Installing MySQL on Other Unix-Like Systems” and mysqld-max.

To compile the MySQL source code with InnoDB support, download MySQL 3.23.34a or newer from http://www.mysql.com/ and configure MySQL with the --with-innodb option. See the section called “MySQL Installation Using a Source Distribution”.

To use InnoDB tables with MySQL 3.23, you must specify configuration parameters in the [mysqld] section of the my.cnf option file. On Windows, you can use my.ini instead. If you do not configure InnoDB in the option file, InnoDB will not start. (From MySQL 4.0 on, InnoDB uses default parameters if you do not specify any. However, to get best performance, it is still recommended that you use parameters appropriate for your system, as discussed in InnoDB configuration.)

In MySQL 3.23, you must specify at the minimum an innodb_data_file_path value to configure the InnoDB data files. For example, to configure InnoDB to use a single 500MB data file, place the following setting in the [mysqld] section of your option file:

[mysqld]
innodb_data_file_path=ibdata1:500M

InnoDB will create the ibdata1 file in the MySQL data directory by default. To specify the location explicitly, specify an innodb_data_home_dir setting. See InnoDB configuration.