Database Reference
In-Depth Information
MariaDB will take the name and add numbers to the end of the actual files it writes
to. Here is an example of using the
mysqlbinlog
program to display the contents of
a binary log in human-readable text:
mysqlbinlog /var/log/mysql/mariadb-bin.000269
Each event in a binary log file is preceded with some comment lines that give the
date and time of the event and its position in the log.
Apart from its informational value, the MariaDB binary log has some other uses.
First, it can be used to recover after a server crash. It is also used when replicating
from one server to another. When used for replication, they are transferred to the
slave servers as relay logs, but they are basically the same as regular binary logs and
can be read with the
mysqlbinlog
program.
More information about the binary log can be found at
https://mariadb.com/kb/
en/binary-log/
.
The error log
The error log is where MariaDB logs information about critical errors. This is also
where MariaDB records startup and shutdown information. If MariaDB crashes or
fails to start, this is the log where we should look first.
We can control the location using the
log_error
variable, which, like other
logging variables, is placed in the
[mysqld]
section of our configuration files.
Here is an example:
log_error = /var/log/mysql/error.log
The default configuration files shipped with MariaDB on Linux configure this file to
be at this location, but it can be placed elsewhere.
Unlike the binary log, the absence of this variable does not turn error logging off.
If the location is not configured in our
my.cnf
or
my.ini
file, error logging is still
enabled and the default location is the data directory. Also, the default name will be
hostname.err
where
hostname
is the name of the computer MariaDB is running on.
More information about the error log can be found at
https://mariadb.com/kb/
en/error-log/
.