When mysql connector is configured with INITIAL_ONLY snapshot mode, it is supposed to simply complete a snapshot and then stop. Then, upon restarting the connector, binlog streaming should be enabled since the snapshot has completed and snapshot mode can be ignored. This was the behavior as of 0.8.2.

However, upgrading to 1.5.0.Final removed this functionality and it now seems impossible to enable binlog streaming when this snapshot mode configured at all. I noticed this new log message as well:

[2021-05-17 14:06:55,768] INFO Streaming is disabled for snapshot mode INITIAL_ONLY (io.debezium.connector.mysql.MySqlStreamingChangeEventSource:796)

Perhaps this is a newly introduced behavior and we need to workaround, or the old behavior was considered a bug which we used as a feature. Either way it would be good to document what is expected and potentially fix/revert this to the old behavior.