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mysqlloggingdatabase-performance

Is my mysql.general_log table getting too big?

I just recently upgraded to MySQL 5.1.6 in order to take advantage of the ability to save the general log to a table -> i.e. mysql.general_log. Once i did this I was immediately surprised how many queries are actually hitting our system. I have about 40,000 rows in this general log table from the first hour. I haven't found it written on the MySQL docs about if there is a general log table size limit.

Is there a problem to letting this general log grow at this rate?

If there is a size problem, how to deal with it?

Are there some accepted practices how to deal with a size problem if there is one?

Should I make an event to purge the table and save the data to a file every so often?

Thanks a lot for the help!

Solution

  • The general_log table by default uses the CSV engine, which is literally just a full-blown CSV file on your drive, but can be accessed via SQL. This means its size limit is the size limit of files on your file system.