MySQL binary log space (Debian)

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MySQL binary log space (Debian)

10/15/07

MySQL binary log space (Debian)

12:27:40 am, by Francois Planque

, Categories: Linux stuff

So it turns out that what is filling up my root partition is my MySQL binary logs.

A collection of fat files in /var/log/mysql ...

So I had several options:

Move the logs to a different partition
Increase the size of the root partition
Decrease the size of the logs

The first option is probably the most reasonable one. But since I had other plans for the evening I actually went with the last option: decreasing the size of the logs!

The magic conf is located in /etc/mysql/my.cnf and the magic line is:

Code:

expire_logs_days = 5

It was set to 10 but I have no idea why I even need 5 days. Aren't those logs only useful until transactions commit to disk, and replication executes. Oh maybe if you have replicated slaves more than 5 days behind the master??

Edit 2009: You can purge the logs up to a specific file with a statement like this:

Code:

PURGE BINARY LOGS TO 'mysql-bin.000666';

Tags: debian, disk space, linux, log files, mysql

2 comments

Comment from: dAniel hAhler [Visitor]

AFAIK binary logs are only needed for replication, not with a single server.
..and for "restore operations", as per http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/binary-log.html

You might want to disable them completely.

10/15/07 @ 01:50

Comment from: Gordon [Visitor]

^Exactly. Bin logs are only needed for replicated setups. You can disable binlogging by commenting out the appropriate line in my.cnf.