> But you still need to connect to the SQL console to run such commands, so you're implying that should be a manual intervention or a follow-up automation patch?

Yes, but I would like to see the problem happen again before adding it.
Also the future version of MariaD has an option to do it automatically

But you still need to connect to the SQL console to run such commands, so you're implying that should be a manual intervention or a follow-up automation patch?

I think my order or preference would be:

1. Avoid the growth at all

2. Periodically kill a slave and rebuild it from scratch (Might be useful for many other reasons)

3. This fix

You can configure the DB so that it uses multiple files instead of one big ibdata1 file. This allows to run a command to optimize the space when/if it become too big.

I would apply these changes and see if it grows again in the future

which changes? I don't understand what you are proposing to do.

I thought it was the fact the we continuosly add and delete tables on it for testing.
I would apply these changes and see if it grows again in the future