The warning was originally added in
commit c67663054a
(MySQL 4.1.12, 5.0.3) to trace claimed undo log corruption that
was analyzed in https://lists.mysql.com/mysql/176250
on November 9, 2004.
Originally, the limit was 20,000 undo log headers or transactions,
but in commit 9d6d1902e0
in MySQL 5.5.11 it was increased to 2,000,000.
The message can be triggered when the progress of purge is prevented
by a long-running transaction (or just an idle transaction whose
read view was started a long time ago), by running many transactions
that UPDATE or DELETE some records, then starting another transaction
with a read view, and finally by executing more than 2,000,000
transactions that UPDATE or DELETE records in InnoDB tables. Finally,
when the oldest long-running transaction is completed, purge would
run up to the next-oldest transaction, and there would still be more
than 2,000,000 transactions to purge.
Because the message can be triggered when the database is obviously
not corrupted, it should be removed. Heavy users of InnoDB should be
monitoring the "History list length" in SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS;
there is no need to spam the error log.
bdcd7f79e4