changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes
Last updated: January 21, 2026
The changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes global parameter is an integer value that sets the amount of time Liquibase waits for a locked database to become available. The default value is 5.
DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table
The DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table only allows a single instance of Liquibase to run at a time. This prevents conflicts between multiple developers working at the same time or multiple servers in a cluster that auto-run Liquibase on startup.
DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK has a column named LOCKED that is set to 1 while Liquibase is running and 0 otherwise. If you try to run Liquibase while the lock record is active, the following message is printed to STDOUT:
Waiting for changelog lock....
This message repeats until LOCKED is set to 0. If the amount of time specified in changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes passes and the lock is not released, Liquibase stops running.
Uses
Liquibase doesn’t automatically time out if a database update takes a long time to finish. If you need to run multiple database updates at once, and each of them takes a long time to complete, you can raise the value of changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes. This way, you don’t have to re-run commands that timed out.
If you need to limit system resources by halting processes in a "waiting" state, you can lower the value of changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes.
Syntax
You can set this parameter in the following ways:
Option | Syntax |
Liquibase properties file (defaults file) |
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Global flow file argument (example) |
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Global CLI parameter |
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JVM system property (JAVA_OPTS environment variable) | Unix:
Windows:
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Liquibase environment variables |
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