release-locks

Last published July 28, 2025

release-locks removes the specific Liquibase lock record from the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table in the needed database.

Uses

release-locks is typically used when there is an interruption with the Liquibase process during deployment resulting from the DATABASECHANGELOGLOCK table being in a locked state.

Syntax

To run the release-locks command, specify the driver, classpath, and URL in the Liquibase properties file. You can also specify these properties in your command line.

Then run the release-locks command:

liquibase release-locks --changelog-file=example-changelog.xml

Note: The username and password attributes are not required for connections and systems which use alternate means of authentication. Also, you can specify database credentials as part of the url attribute.

Command parameters

Attributes

Definition

Requirement

--url=<string>

The JDBC database connection URL.

Required

--changelog-file=<string>

The root changelog

Optional

--default-catalog-name=<string>

Name of the default catalog to use for the database connection

Optional

--default-schema-name=<string>

Name of the default schema to use for the database connection. If defaultSchemaName is set, then objects do not have to be fully qualified. This means you can refer to just mytable instead of myschema.mytable.

Note: In the properties file and JAVA_OPTS only: in 4.18.0 and earlier, specify this parameter using the syntax defaultSchemaName. In 4.19.0 and later, use the syntax liquibase.command.defaultSchemaName.

Note: In Liquibase 4.12.0 and later, you can use mixed-case schema names if you set --preserve-schema-case to true. However, in Liquibase 4.12.0–4.22.0, the Liquibase validator still throws a DatabaseException error if you specify a mixed-case value of defaultSchemaName. In 4.23.0 and later, the Liquibase validator accepts any casing.

Optional

--driver=<string>

The JDBC driver class

Optional

--driver-properties-file=<string>

The JDBC driver properties file

Optional

--password=<string>

Password to connect to the target database.

Tip: It is a best practice to store sensitive data in a Secrets Management tool with Liquibase Pro.

Optional

--username=<string>

Username to connect to the target database.

Tip: It is a best practice to store sensitive data in a Secrets Management tool with Liquibase Pro.

Optional

Output

When successful, the release-locks command produces the following output:

Liquibase Community 4.9.1 by Liquibase Successfully released all database change log locks for 'DBUSER@jdbc:h2:tcp://localhost:9090/mem:dev' Liquibase command 'release-locks' was executed successfully.