Recently there have been several issues reported to me about DDL activity causing MySQL crash scenarios. In one case it stemmed from dropping multiple databases, one after the other in rapid succession. But in the case that I was recently dealing with directly, where we were upgrading to MySQL 5.7, it was the result of mysql_upgrade running an ALTER TABLE FORCE on a 2.2Tb table in order to convert it to the new microsecond precision supporting data format.

The issue occurred after the intermediate table had been completely filled with all the necessary data and right when MySQL would swap out the existing table for the intermediate. After a period of time MySQL crashed and the following InnoDB monitor output was found in the error log.

2017-11-19T00:22:44.070363Z 7 [ERROR] InnoDB: The age of the last checkpoint is 379157140, which exceeds the log group capacity 377483674.
InnoDB: …