Non-existent --defaults-file causes "Program aborted" message but server still starts

[Sergey Petrunia]

In current 5.3, if I run the server with --defaults-file=/path/to/nowhere it will still start:

psergey@pslp2:~/dev2/5.3-look48/sql$ ./mysqld --defaults-file=/path/to/nowhere
Could not open required defaults file: /path/to/nowhere
Fatal error in defaults handling. Program aborted
120116 00:44:24 [Note] PrimeBase XT (PBXT) Engine 1.0.11-7 Pre-GA loaded...
120116 00:44:24 [Note] Paul McCullagh, PrimeBase Technologies GmbH, http://www.primebase.org
InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.3
120116 0:44:24 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
120116 00:44:24 [Note] PBXT: Recovering from 1-43, bytes to read: 33554389
120116 0:44:25 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
120116 00:44:25 [Note] PBXT: Recovering complete at 1-43, bytes read: 33554389
120116 0:44:25 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda.
120116 0:44:27 Percona XtraDB (http://www.percona.com) 1.0.17-13.0 started; log sequence number 5124216676
120116 0:44:27 [Note] Recovering after a crash using tc.log
120116 0:44:27 [Note] Starting crash recovery...
120116 0:44:27 [Note] Crash recovery finished.

I think it should not start in this case.

[Sergey Petrunia (sergefp)]

Note that some other error may prevent it from starting. For example, wrong errmsg.sys file will prevent it from staring:

psergey@pslp2:~/dev2/5.3-look48/sql$ ./mysqld --defaults-file=/path/to/nowhere
Could not open required defaults file: /path/to/nowhere
Fatal error in defaults handling. Program aborted
120116 0:43:46 [ERROR] Error message file '/usr/local/mysql/share/mysql/english/errmsg.sys' had only 639 error messages, but it should contain at least 930 error messages.

but if there are no other errors, the server will still start.

[Sergey Petrunia (sergefp)]

I observed this on mariadb-5.3, compiled with BUILD/compile-pentium-max, but it could be others are also affected.

[Sergey Petrunia (sergefp)]

Elena, could you please check
- if this is repeatable/a bug at all in your opinion
- if other versions are affected?

(it looks surprising that something so basic fails. Do I miss something?)

[Elena Stepanova (elenst)]

It is a bug according to the definition of the option in MySQL manual (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/option-files.html#option_general_defaults-file):
"If the file does not exist or is otherwise inaccessible, the program exits with an error. "

I will check shortly on which versions it is repeatable.

[Elena Stepanova (elenst)]

Reproducible on MySQL 5.1.60, MariaDB 5.1.60, 5.2.10, 5.3.3.
Not reproducible (server really aborts) on MySQL 5.5.20, 5.6.4, MariaDB 5.5.

[Sergey Petrunia (sergefp)]

Not repeatable on current 5.3