title: Out of memory while dropping a column
body: <p>I've a database hosted on Clever-Cloud (<a href="https://www.clever-cloud.com/pricing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.clever-cloud.com/pricing</a> - MySQL addon size LM: memory 1 GB &amp; 2 vCPUS). I have a table with 188 000 lines about 311 MB using InnoDb engine.</p>
  <p>When I try to drop a column of my table (no index on this column) I get in phpMyAdmin the following error:</p>
  <h1>2006 - MySQL server has gone away</h1>
  <p>Log of MySQL at the time of the error : <a href="https://gist.github.com/urcadox/038c180cefdcba20e1052e7418a43324" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://gist.github.com/urcadox/038c180cefdcba20e1052e7418a43324</a></p>
  <p>I've read that InnoDb engine used memory to create a new table, copy the data without the dropped column and switch old and new tables to perform the drop operation.</p>
  <ul>
  <li>Is there anything I can do to use less memory?</li>
  <li>Is there anyway to make InnoDb use disk instead of memory?</li>
  </ul>
  <p>Thank you!</p>