On your environments page, as of around Moodle 2.6 you might see a message like this:


unsupported_db_table_row_format if this test fails, it indicates a potential problem

Your database has tables using Antelope as the file format. You are recommended to convert the tables to the Barracuda file format. See the documentation Administration via command line for details of a tool for converting InnoDB tables to Barracuda.


If you are running MySQL/MariaDB, this message is advising you should move to the better InnoDB Barracuda format.

To perform the table upgrades, you use the Moodle cli (i.e. admin/cli) and run the following commands (prefix with sudo if relevant):

php admin/cli/mysql_compressed_rows.php -l

This lists tables that need compacting/compressing e.g.

mdl_data                        Compact     (needs fixing)
mdl_data_fields                 Compact     (needs fixing)
mdl_enrol_paypal                Compact     (needs fixing)
mdl_lti                         Compact     (needs fixing)
mdl_user                        Compact     (needs fixing)
mdl_user_info_field             Compact     (needs fixing)

To fix, run the following. Note this can be database intensive so avoid running during high load periods or when there are a lot of active users on the site.

php admin/cli/mysql_compressed_rows.php -f --showsql

mdl_data                         ... Compressed
mdl_data_fields                  ... Compressed
mdl_enrol_paypal                 ... Compressed
mdl_lti                          ... Compressed
mdl_user                         ... Compressed
mdl_user_info_field              ... Compressed

To confirm all is well, run the first info command again or check the admin/environment.php page again.