Set AUTO_INCREMENT on a column with missing values - mysql

Question

I have a table called users in my database. It has a field id of type int. As of now this is manually incremented for every user that registers and some intermediate values are missing because of deleted user accounts. I cannot change the user id of other registered users . I tried to change this column to AUTO_INCREMENT using this statement
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` BIGINT(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT;
But I got the following error
1062 - ALTER TABLE causes auto_increment resequencing, resulting in
duplicate entry '1' for key 'PRIMARY'
I only have around 200 users in my table. So I wanted to start AUTO_INCREMENT from 201. I executed the following statements
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` AUTO_INCREMENT=201;
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` INT(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT;
But still I encounter the same issue.

Answer 1

If you don't have duplicates (id), you should not have problems:
mysql> SELECT VERSION();
+-----------+
| VERSION() |
+-----------+
| 5.7.17 |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `userinfo`;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `userinfo` (
-> `id` INT(11) NOT NULL
-> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO `userinfo`
-> (`id`)
-> VALUES
-> (1),
-> (2),
-> (3),
-> -- (1),
-> (10),
-> (11),
-> (15),
-> (20),
-> (182),
-> (191);
Query OK, 9 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 9 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> ALTER TABLE `userinfo`
-> CHANGE `id` `id` BIGINT(20) NOT NULL
-> PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT;
Query OK, 9 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 9 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> ALTER TABLE `userinfo` AUTO_INCREMENT = 201;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> SHOW CREATE TABLE `userinfo`\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Table: userinfo
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `userinfo` (
`id` bigint(20) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=201 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8mb4
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
In another case:
mysql> SELECT VERSION();
+-----------+
| VERSION() |
+-----------+
| 5.7.17 |
+-----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `userinfo`;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `userinfo` (
-> `id` INT(11) NOT NULL
-> );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO `userinfo`
-> (`id`)
-> VALUES
-> (1),
-> (2),
-> (3),
-> (1), -- Duplicate
-> (10),
-> (11),
-> (15),
-> (20),
-> (182),
-> (191);
Query OK, 10 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 10 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> ALTER TABLE `userinfo`
-> CHANGE `id` `id` BIGINT(20) NOT NULL
-> PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT;
ERROR 1062 (23000): ALTER TABLE causes auto_increment resequencing, resulting in duplicate entry '1' for key 'PRIMARY'

Answer 2

Try resetting the column to primary key, like this:
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` INT(10) PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT;

Answer 3

You can just drop auto_increment then set auto_increment, do not need recreate primary key
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` int NOT NULL;
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` AUTO_INCREMENT=9;
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` int NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT;

Answer 4

I was having this same problem/error (MySql 5.7.28) with bulk inserts of data that was missing primary key/auto_increment values - even though there were no duplicates. I wanted to preserve the primary key and needed to preserve the original field values also as resequencing would have caused data-integrity problems in the system.
My solution was to remove the auto_increment and then primary key as suggested above:
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `id` int NOT NULL;
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` DROP PRIMARY KEY;
Then run my bulk insert statement without resequencing problems.
Then restore the primary key and original values using the following steps:
renaming the original PK/auto-increment field which now has the desired values in it
creating a new PK/auto-increment field with the original field name
setting the auto-increment value to one more than the max value of the renamed field
copying the original values into the new PK/auto-increment field
dropping the renamed field (now you have the original schema with PK/auto-increment field with original gaps in the sequence as desired.
Here is the sql for the first two steps:
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` CHANGE `id` `orig_id` INT;
ALTER TAble `userinfo` add id int auto_increment not null primary key;
Then use the following query result:
select max(orig_id) + 1 from `userinfo`;
to set the new auto-increment, before updating the new PK/auto-increment values:
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` AUTO_INCREMENT=201;
UPDATE `userinfo` set id = orig_id;
ALTER TABLE `userinfo` drop column orig_id;
and now I've got the original table values copied exactly as wanted. I hope this helps others save time.