Django Unknown system variable 'TRANSACTION' on syncdb

Question

My local Django is blowing up running the manage.py syncdb script that runs on our servers.

This is the error message I'm seeing when running python manage.py syncdb,

OperationalError: (1193, "Unknown system variable 'TRANSACTION'")

It looks like a MySQL issue, just for reference I have MySQL-python 1.2.4 install with Django 1.5.1 in a virtual env and I am running MySQL version 5.6.10.

This is my current virtual env in full from pip list,

Django (1.5.1)
MySQL-python (1.2.4)
pymongo (2.5.2)
python-cjson (1.0.5)
wsgiref (0.1.2)

I'm not very proficient with Django and Googling has turned up nothing, could anyone tell me what might be going here?

Full trackback of the command below

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 222, in run_from_argv
    self.execute(*args, **options.__dict__)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 255, in execute
    output = self.handle(*args, **options)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 385, in handle
    return self.handle_noargs(**options)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/syncdb.py", line 56, in handle_noargs
    cursor = connection.cursor()
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/__init__.py", line 326, in cursor
    cursor = util.CursorWrapper(self._cursor(), self)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py", line 405, in _cursor
    self.connection = Database.connect(**kwargs)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 81, in Connect
    return Connection(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/Users/jamesmcmahon/src/business-intelligence/mongo2mysql/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 187, in __init__
    super(Connection, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs2)
OperationalError: (1193, "Unknown system variable 'TRANSACTION'")

EDIT:
I found the exact line causing the issues, in my settings.py

DATABASES = {
     'default': {
        'NAME': 'test',
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'USER': 'redacted',
        'PASSWORD': 'redacted',
        'HOST': 'localhost'
        'OPTIONS': { "init_command": "SET storage_engine=INNODB, SESSION TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED" }
    },
}

The options line, when committed out, fixes the issue. Only thing I can think of is that the server is running MySQL 5.5 and I am running 5.6 locally.

I'd still like to figure out exactly what is going on.

Answer 1

use

DATABASES = {

'default': {
    'NAME': 'test',
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
    'USER': 'redacted',
    'PASSWORD': 'redacted',
    'HOST': 'localhost'
    'OPTIONS': { "init_command": "SET SESSION TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED"}   

},

}

ie without "storage_engine=INNODB,". The latest versions of MySql engine by default INNODB.