How to create a federated table in MariaDB without specifying columns - mariadb

Question

I am trying to use the Federated engine of MariaDB 10.1.12 to create tables that are based on tables in a remote database. Following the MariaDB instructions about how to use the FederatedX implementation, in database db1 I create a table as
CREATE TABLE test_table (
id int(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
name varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
other int(20) NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (id),
KEY name (name),
KEY other_key (other))
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
Now when I want to see this table in a second database db2 using the Federated engine, I can issue
CREATE TABLE test_table (
id int(20) NOT NULL auto_increment,
name varchar(32) NOT NULL default '',
other int(20) NOT NULL default '0',
PRIMARY KEY (id),
KEY name (name),
KEY other_key (other)
) ENGINE=FEDERATED
DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='mysql://user_x:pass_y#localhost/db1/test_table';
All this is copied from the MariaDB documentation and works well. However, if I try to create the table without explicitly duplicating the definition of the table structure - an example given in the same documentation
CREATE TABLE test_table ENGINE=FEDERATED DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1
CONNECTION='mysql://user_x:pass_y#localhost/db1/test_table';
MariaDB responds with an error
ERROR 1113 (42000): A table must have at least 1 column
Am I missing something or is it not possible to use federated tables without specifying the individual columns?

Answer 1

It seems that with the standard installation of MariaDB on Ubuntu 14.04, the old Federated engine is active, not the new FederatedX variant. Only the latter supports auto-discovery of columns. In order to correct this, I took the following steps:
uninstall soname 'ha_federated';
to remove the federated plugin. After a server restart, the correct one is loaded with
install plugin federated soname 'ha_federatedx';
This loads the new FederatedX implementation supporting auto-discovery of columns. To view the installed engines, one can list them with
show engines;
If all is correct, there should be this line in the output:
| FEDERATED | YES | FederatedX pluggable storage engine |