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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-01T11:17:56+00:00

I have a mysql table with about 2,000,000 entries, with a primary key which

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I have a mysql table with about 2,000,000 entries, with a primary key which is auto incrementing. However, at one point the auto increment value suddenly jumped from what it was (around 2,000,000) to maximum integer value (2,147,483,647). Needless to say all subsequent insertions into this table failed. When I noticed it, I changed primary key type from int to bigint and so it works fine for now.

So my question is, why could this have happened? And are there any precautions which I could take to avoid this from happening in the future?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A failed insert can still cause the auto-increment column to increase. If your program went into an infinite loop of failures it could cause the limit to be reached.

    It’s also possible to set the auto-increment programmatically to a specific value.

    ALTER TABLE yourtable AUTO_INCREMENT = 12345;
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