This post shows how to get some MySQL status information from the command line on a Linux/Unix machine using either the mysqladmin command or the mysql init script. Information returned includes the version, connection type, socket file location, uptime and some other stats.
Using mysqladmin
Using mysqladmin is the only way to get the same sort of information across distros. The example provided in the "using the init script" section below works on Debian based distros and may or may not yield the same information for other distros. For example, on Red Hat / CentOS based distros the init script will only return the pid number and whether MySQL is running.
To get a basic set of stats run this:
mysqladmin -u root -p status
This will show something like this:
Uptime: 1588357 Threads: 1 Questions: 52438664 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 0 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 384 Queries per second avg: 33.014
To get more comprehensive information run this:
mysqladmin -u root -p version
which will show something like this:
Enter password: mysqladmin Ver 8.41 Distrib 5.0.22, for redhat-linux-gnu on x86_64 Copyright (C) 2000 MySQL AB & MySQL Finland AB & TCX DataKonsult AB This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to modify and redistribute it under the GPL license Server version 5.0.22 Protocol version 10 Connection Localhost via UNIX socket UNIX socket /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock Uptime: 18 days 9 hours 14 min 17 sec Threads: 1 Questions: 52441939 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 0 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 384 Queries per second avg: 33.014
These first two examples are from MySQL running on a CentOS 5 server.
Using the init script
The init script at /etc/init.d/mysql on Debian based distros will return the same sort of status information as "mysqladmin status" when passed the "status" parameter. Run this:
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql status
This will show something like this:
/usr/bin/mysqladmin Ver 8.41 Distrib 5.0.51a, for debian-linux-gnu on x86_64 Copyright (C) 2000-2006 MySQL AB This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to modify and redistribute it under the GPL license Server version 5.0.51a-24 Protocol version 10 Connection Localhost via UNIX socket UNIX socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Uptime: 202 days 18 hours 35 min 10 sec Threads: 1 Questions: 93883881 Slow queries: 26 Opens: 145610 Flush tables: 1 Open tables: 256 Queries per second avg: 5.359.
This example is from a Debian 5 server.
Using the init script instead of mysqladmin means it can be run as the root user or using sudo without needing to know the mysql root user’s password.
Remember this init script example on a Red Hat or CentOS based system will not show the same information but instead just that MySQL is running along with the pid number.
