Inspecting and validating .ibd files with innodb.fyi

The inno CLI works directly on InnoDB files, so you can examine a tablespace without a running MySQL server. Here are the commands you’ll reach for most.

Inspecting structure

  • inno parse -f file.ibd - read each page’s header and print a per-page breakdown plus a page-type summary.
  • inno pages -f file.ibd - deeper page analysis: B+Tree index pages, undo, and BLOB/LOB chains.
  • inno dump -f file.ibd - a hex dump of raw page bytes, optionally for a byte range.
  • inno sdi -f file.ibd - extract the table’s SDI metadata (MySQL 8.0+), and inno schema reconstructs the CREATE TABLE from it.

Validating integrity

  • inno checksum -f file.ibd - validate CRC-32C and legacy InnoDB page checksums and the trailer LSN. It exits non-zero on failure, which is intentional - handy in CI or a script.
  • inno verify -f file.ibd - structural integrity checks that work even when checksums are invalid.
  • inno diff a.ibd b.ibd - compare two tablespace files page by page.

Watching a live file

inno watch -f file.ibd polls a live tablespace and reports page-level changes as they happen, using LSN differences - useful for understanding what a workload actually touches.

Good to know

  • Page size is auto-detected, but if page 0 is damaged you can override it with --page-size.
  • A non-zero exit from checksum or verify means a check failed, not that the tool crashed.
  • Encrypted tablespaces need a keyring (--keyring), and encryption is a CLI-only feature - the browser analyzer doesn’t handle it.

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