mysql exception when synchronizing db with django's manage.py script - django

Question

I am relatively new to django. I have defined my db schema and validated it with no errors (manage.py validate reports 0 errors found).
Yet when I run ./manage.py syncdb
I get the following stack trace:
Creating table demo_foobar_one
Creating table demo_foobar_two
<snip>...</snip>
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "manage.py", line 11, in <module>
execute_manager(settings)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 438, in execute_manager
utility.execute()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 379, in execute
self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 191, in run_from_argv
self.execute(*args, **options.__dict__)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 218, in execute
output = self.handle(*args, **options)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 347, in handle
return self.handle_noargs(**options)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 103, in handle_noargs
emit_post_sync_signal(created_models, verbosity, interactive, db)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/core/management/sql.py", line 185, in emit_post_sync_signal
interactive=interactive, db=db)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/dispatch/dispatcher.py", line 162, in send
response = receiver(signal=self, sender=sender, **named)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/contrib/auth/management/__init__.py", line 28, in create_permissions
defaults={'name': name, 'content_type': ctype})
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/manager.py", line 135, in get_or_create
return self.get_query_set().get_or_create(**kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 373, in get_or_create
obj.save(force_insert=True, using=self.db)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 435, in save
self.save_base(using=using, force_insert=force_insert, force_update=force_update)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/base.py", line 528, in save_base
result = manager._insert(values, return_id=update_pk, using=using)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/manager.py", line 195, in _insert
return insert_query(self.model, values, **kwargs)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/query.py", line 1479, in insert_query
return query.get_compiler(using=using).execute_sql(return_id)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/sql/compiler.py", line 783, in execute_sql
cursor = super(SQLInsertCompiler, self).execute_sql(None)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/models/sql/compiler.py", line 727, in execute_sql
cursor.execute(sql, params)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/backends/util.py", line 15, in execute
return self.cursor.execute(sql, params)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py", line 86, in execute
return self.cursor.execute(query, args)
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/MySQL_python-1.2.3-py2.6-linux-i686.egg/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 176, in execute
if not self._defer_warnings: self._warning_check()
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/MySQL_python-1.2.3-py2.6-linux-i686.egg/MySQLdb/cursors.py", line 92, in _warning_check
warn(w[-1], self.Warning, 3)
_mysql_exceptions.Warning: Data truncated for column 'name' at row 1
I have checked (and double checked) my table schema. All name field are CharField type with maximum length = 64. The backend db I am using is MySQL, so I am sure that indexes can be created for strings of length 64.
What could be causing this error (I suspect it is a misleading error message - even though its coming from the db itself)...

Answer 1

The traceback is happening during the creation of a django.contrib.auth.Permission: some of these get created for your models automatically as part of syncdb.
Permission.name has max_length=50, so you probably have an application and/or model class with a really long name?
Try the following query in manage.py dbshell:
SELECT * FROM auth_permission WHERE LENGTH(name) = 50;
If you cannot change your model name, then you can fix this problem by reducing the length of the generated Permission.name by specifying verbose_name in the model Meta class (see here for more details):
class MyVeryLongModelNameThatIsBreakingMyMigration(models.Model):
class Meta:
verbose_name = 'my long model'
Update
There's an open (as of 2013) Django ticket to fix this:
#8162 (Increase Permission.name max_length)

Answer 2

As Piet Delport noted, the problem is that your model name is too long.
You're certainly going to have to shorten your model name, and then clean up your database. How you do that depends upon where you are in the development process.
If this is a brand new application, with a dedicated database, and no actual data, the simple answer is to drop and recreate the database, and then re-run python manage.py syncdb.
If you have other tables in the database that need to be left alone, but the tables for your Django have no 'real' data, and can thus be dropped without damage, then you can use manage.py sqlclear to generate SQL DDL to drop all of the Django-generated tables, constraints, and indexes.
Do the following:
apps="auth contenttypes sessions sites messages admin <myapp1> <myapp2>"
python manage.py sqlclear ${apps} > clear.sql
You can feed the generated script to mysql or python manage.py dbshell. Once that's done, you can re-run python manage.py syncdb.
If you have actual data in your database tables that can't be dropped or deleted: Slap yourself and repeat 100 times "I will never do development against a production database again. I will always back up my databases before changing them." Now you're going to have to hand-code SQL to change the affected table name, as well as anything else that references it and any references in the auth_permissions table and any other Django system tables. Your actual steps will depend entirely upon the state of your database and tables.

Answer 3

I also got error like this one using postgresql django 1.2, but the problem was not the length, but using ugettext_lazy for translating the names. ('can_purge', _("Can purge")) is evidently unacceptable, since the name is stored in the database as text