5.4 MySQL Server Logs

MySQL Server has several logs that can help you find out what activity is taking place.

By default, no logs are enabled, except the error log on Windows. (The DDL log is always created when required, and has no user-configurable options; see Section 5.4.6, “The DDL Log”.) The following log-specific sections provide information about the server options that enable logging.

By default, the server writes files for all enabled logs in the data directory. You can force the server to close and reopen the log files (or in some cases switch to a new log file) by flushing the logs. Log flushing occurs when you issue a FLUSH LOGS statement; execute mysqladmin with a flush-logs or refresh argument; or execute mysqldump with a --flush-logs or --master-data option. See Section 13.7.7.3, “FLUSH Syntax”, Section 4.5.2, “mysqladmin — Client for Administering a MySQL Server”, and Section 4.5.4, “mysqldump — A Database Backup Program”. In addition, the binary log is flushed when its size reaches the value of the max_binlog_size system variable.

You can control the general query and slow query logs during runtime. You can enable or disable logging, or change the log file name. You can tell the server to write general query and slow query entries to log tables, log files, or both. For details, see Section 5.4.1, “Selecting General Query Log and Slow Query Log Output Destinations”, Section 5.4.3, “The General Query Log”, and Section 5.4.5, “The Slow Query Log”.

The relay log is used only on slave replication servers, to hold data changes from the master server that must also be made on the slave. For discussion of relay log contents and configuration, see Section 17.2.4.1, “The Slave Relay Log”.

For information about log maintenance operations such as expiration of old log files, see Section 5.4.7, “Server Log Maintenance”.

For information about keeping logs secure, see Section 6.1.2.3, “Passwords and Logging”.