• Reference
  • Version · 6.0
  • Change Automation Reference

changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes

Last updated: August 12, 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)

liquibase.changelogLockWaitTimeInMinutes: <int>

Global flow file argument (example)

stages:

Default:

actions:

- type: liquibase

command: update

globalArgs: { changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes: "<int>" }

Global CLI parameter

liquibase

--changelog-lock-wait-time-in-minutes=<int> update

--changelog-file=example-changelog.xml

JVM system property (JAVA_OPTS environment variable)

Unix:

JAVA_OPTS=-Dliquibase.changelogLockWaitTimeInMinutes=<int>

Windows:

JAVA_OPTS=-D"liquibase.changelogLockWaitTimeInMinutes"=<int>

Liquibase environment variables

LIQUIBASE_CHANGELOG_LOCK_WAIT_TIME_IN_MINUTES=<number>

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