24.4.2 Event Scheduler Configuration

Events are executed by a special event scheduler thread; when we refer to the Event Scheduler, we actually refer to this thread. When running, the event scheduler thread and its current state can be seen by users having the PROCESS privilege in the output of SHOW PROCESSLIST, as shown in the discussion that follows.

The global event_scheduler system variable determines whether the Event Scheduler is enabled and running on the server. It has one of these 3 values, which affect event scheduling as described here. The default is ON.

If the Event Scheduler status has not been set to DISABLED, event_scheduler can be toggled between ON and OFF (using SET). It is also possible to use 0 for OFF, and 1 for ON when setting this variable. Thus, any of the following 4 statements can be used in the mysql client to turn on the Event Scheduler:

Similarly, any of these 4 statements can be used to turn off the Event Scheduler:

Although ON and OFF have numeric equivalents, the value displayed for event_scheduler by SELECT or SHOW VARIABLES is always one of OFF, ON, or DISABLED. DISABLED has no numeric equivalent. For this reason, ON and OFF are usually preferred over 1 and 0 when setting this variable.

Note that attempting to set event_scheduler without specifying it as a global variable causes an error:

To disable the event scheduler, use one of the following two methods:

To enable the Event Scheduler, restart the server without the --event-scheduler=DISABLED command-line option, or after removing or commenting out the line containing event-scheduler=DISABLED in the server configuration file, as appropriate. Alternatively, you can use ON (or 1) or OFF (or 0) in place of the DISABLED value when starting the server.

Starting the MySQL server with the --skip-grant-tables option causes event_scheduler to be set to DISABLED, overriding any other value set either on the command line or in the my.cnf or my.ini file (Bug #26807).

For SQL statements used to create, alter, and drop events, see Section 24.4.3, “Event Syntax”.

MySQL provides an EVENTS table in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA database. This table can be queried to obtain information about scheduled events which have been defined on the server. See Section 24.4.4, “Event Metadata”, and Section 25.10, “The INFORMATION_SCHEMA EVENTS Table”, for more information.

For information regarding event scheduling and the MySQL privilege system, see Section 24.4.6, “The Event Scheduler and MySQL Privileges”.