After moving to own server Autonumber started at randomly earlier point

Technical Help
1

Are you using our SaaS platform (Baserow.io) or self-hosting Baserow?

Self-hosted

What are the exact steps to reproduce this issue?

We’ve moved from SaaS to our own server.

I have a table with inventory. I use a Autonumber fiel to generate inventory-IDs

After moving to the new server the Autonumber field randomly started at an earlier number. It started with 464 instead of continuing with a number above 3000

This is quite confusing and makes me a little scared.

It would not be a big problem if numbers are not in chronologic order of their generation. That is acceptable for us.
But it would be a big problem if Baserow will not recognize that upcoming 493 already exits (see screenshot).

I would like report this behavior as a bug.

Furthermore I would like to ask the experts:

  • any chance to tell Baserow where to continue the next Autonumber?
  • does Baserow check if its next Autonumber already exits and prevent duplicates?

Attach screenshots, videos, or logs that demonstrate the issue.

Autonumber.png
Autonumber.png621×387 33.8 KB

2

Hey @be_Berlin, in general, we use a race condition safeguard to ensure that two rows don’t end up with the same ID.

If you’re seeing a large number of skipped IDs, it likely means those IDs were assigned, but the row creation process failed — so the rows don’t appear in the table.

Do you have any automations running?

I’ve added more details here: Custom field autonumber skipping numbers - #6 by olgatrykush

3

Hi @olgatrykush ,
Thank you for your quick respond.

But I would like to point out that it is not about the ID (=row_id) of the rows.
row_ID as in in column 1 on the left side in my screenshot.

But it is about a Autonumber field. The second column in my screenshot.
As I wrote: it doesn’t not only skip any numbers. It started “back” at an earlier number (after moving the instance).

So for my understanding this is a separate issue(?). And regarding that, I’d like to come back to the questions I mentioned above.

4

Oh sorry for the mix-up! Let me check this with the dev team :raising_hands:

5

Hey @be_Berlin, I just received a confirmation from the team that it’s a bug, so here is the issue: AutoNumber field sequence resets to row count instead of max value after workspace import · Issue #5115 · baserow/baserow · GitHub

6

I’m happy to contribute to the development by reporting bugs properly.

However, the two questions I mentioned above are still open:

I would like to ask the experts:

  • any chance to tell Baserow where to continue the next Autonumber?

  • does Baserow check if its next Autonumber already exits and prevent duplicates?

I have no problem if at least one of the questions can be answered with ‘yes’.

But if both are answered with ‘no’, then I’ll have duplicates, won’t I?

7

No — this isn’t supported. The Autonumber field has no settings for start/offset. Only possible workaround is manually updating it in the database (self-hosted only).

Yes — Autonumber values are unique and duplicates are prevented. Upcoming fixes should also eliminate gaps.

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