Percona Toolkit updates for 9.7¶

Percona Toolkit is updated to support MySQL 9.7. The updates address terminology, deprecations, and authentication improvements. If your automation or runbooks use these tools, plan toolkit updates with the database upgrade.

For underlying Percona Toolkit guidance, see Percona Toolkit Documentation .

Required Percona Toolkit version¶

Use Percona Toolkit 3.7.0 or later when working with 9.7. The 3.7.0 series added support for MySQL 8.4 client libraries. Later 3.7.x releases extend the data source name (DSN) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) options and address security advisories.

Take the following actions.

Confirm that each deployed tool reports version 3.7.0 or higher when invoked with --version.
For first-time installations, install the most recent 3.7.x release available in the Percona repositories.
Track the Percona Toolkit release notes for security and compatibility updates.

Tools relevant to a 9.7 upgrade¶

The following table maps upgrade phases to Percona Toolkit tools that support each phase.

Phase	Tool	Purpose
Pre-upgrade snapshot	`pt-mysql-summary`	Capture the source server state for baseline and triage
Pre-upgrade snapshot	`pt-show-grants`	Export user accounts and privileges as portable SQL
Configuration audit	`pt-config-diff`	Compare `my.cnf` settings across source, target, and replicas
Query compatibility	`pt-upgrade`	Replay source logs against the 9.7 candidate. Report row, warning, and timing differences
Schema preparation	`pt-online-schema-change`	Apply column or index changes online before the upgrade window
Replication consistency	`pt-table-checksum`	Compute consistency checksums on the source and replicas
Replication reconciliation	`pt-table-sync`	Reconcile rows after `pt-table-checksum` reports drift
Replication topology	`pt-replica-find`	Discover the topology before each rolling-upgrade step
Replication recovery	`pt-replica-restart`	Restart replication after recoverable errors
Incident response	`pt-stalk`	Collect diagnostic data on upgrade-related issues

Terminology alignment¶

Toolkit commands and output use SOURCE and REPLICA terminology, consistent with MySQL 9.7.

Renamed tools¶

The following tools are renamed.

pt-slave-find is renamed to pt-replica-find.
pt-slave-restart is renamed to pt-replica-restart.

The rename landed in Percona Toolkit 3.5.0. Aliases with the original names remain for a transition period. Update scripts and runbooks to the renamed tools.

Deprecated tool¶

pt-slave-delay is deprecated and does not support MySQL 9.7. Use built-in delayed replication instead.

To configure delayed replication, run the following statement against the replica.

CHANGE REPLICATION SOURCE TO SOURCE_DELAY = <SECONDS>;

Combine SOURCE_DELAY with START REPLICA to apply or resume the delay. The setting persists across replica restarts.

Authentication and SSL¶

The following authentication and SSL updates apply to recent Percona Toolkit releases.

SSL and Transport Layer Security (TLS) handling is improved. Tools accept SSL options through the DSN field.
Support for the caching_sha2_password and sha256_password authentication plugins is improved.
For 9.7, configure clients to use caching_sha2_password because the server-side mysql_native_password plugin is removed.

What to change in your environment¶

Apply the following changes when upgrading to 9.7.

Upgrade Percona Toolkit to 3.7.0 or higher before starting the database upgrade.
Remove dependencies on pt-slave-delay. Replace the dependency with built-in delayed replication.
Update automation and scripts. Replace pt-slave-find with pt-replica-find, and replace pt-slave-restart with pt-replica-restart.
Validate toolkit connectivity using your TLS settings and supported authentication plugins.
For each tool used in production, run --version and confirm the output matches the deployed release.