15 Practical Usages of Mysqladmin Command For Administering MySQL Server

In all the 15 mysqladmin command-line examples below, tmppassword is used as the MySQL root user password. Please change this to your MySQL root password.

1. How to change the MySQL root user password?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword password 'newpassword'

# mysql -u root -pnewpassword
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 8
Server version: 5.1.25-rc-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>

2. How to check whether MySQL Server is up and running?

# mysqladmin -u root -p ping
Enter password:
mysqld is alive

3. How do I find out what version of MySQL I am running?

Apart from giving the ‘Server version’, this command also displays the current status of the mysql server.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword version
mysqladmin  Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.1.25-rc, for redhat-linux-gnu on i686
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          5.1.25-rc-community
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:                 107 days 6 hours 11 min 44 sec

Threads: 1  Questions: 231976  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 17067
Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 64  Queries per second avg: 0.25

4. What is the current status of MySQL server?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword status
Uptime: 9267148
Threads: 1  Questions: 231977  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 17067
Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 64  Queries per second avg: 0.25

The status command displays the following information:

• Uptime: Uptime of the mysql server in seconds
• Threads: Total number of clients connected to the server.
• Questions: Total number of queries the server has executed since the startup.
• Slow queries: Total number of queries whose execution time waas more than long_query_time variable’s value.
• Opens: Total number of tables opened by the server.
• Flush tables: How many times the tables were flushed.
• Open tables: Total number of open tables in the database.

5. How to view all the MySQL Server status variable and it’s current value?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword extended-status
+-----------------------------------+-----------+
| Variable_name                     | Value     |
+-----------------------------------+-----------+
| Aborted_clients                   | 579       |
| Aborted_connects                  | 8         |
| Binlog_cache_disk_use             | 0         |
| Binlog_cache_use                  | 0         |
| Bytes_received                    | 41387238  |
| Bytes_sent                        | 308401407 |
| Com_admin_commands                | 3524      |
| Com_assign_to_keycache            | 0         |
| Com_alter_db                      | 0         |
| Com_alter_db_upgrade              | 0         |

6. How to display all MySQL server system variables and the values?

# mysqladmin  -u root -ptmppassword variables
+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| Variable_name                   | Value                           |
+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+
| auto_increment_increment        | 1                               |
| basedir                         | /                               |
| big_tables                      | OFF                             |
| binlog_format                   | MIXED                           |
| bulk_insert_buffer_size         | 8388608                         |
| character_set_client            | latin1                          |
| character_set_database          | latin1                          |
| character_set_filesystem        | binary                          |

skip.....

| time_format                     | %H:%i:%s                        |
| time_zone                       | SYSTEM                          |
| timed_mutexes                   | OFF                             |
| tmpdir                          | /tmp                            |
| tx_isolation                    | REPEATABLE-READ                 |
| unique_checks                   | ON                              |
| updatable_views_with_limit      | YES                             |
| version                         | 5.1.25-rc-community             |
| version_comment                 | MySQL Community Server (GPL)    |
| version_compile_machine         | i686                            |
| version_compile_os              | redhat-linux-gnu                |
| wait_timeout                    | 28800                           |
+---------------------------------+---------------------------------+

7. How to display all the running process/queries in the mysql database?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword processlist
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 20 | root | localhost |    | Sleep   | 36   |       |                  |
| 23 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

You can use this command effectively to debug any performance issue and identify the query that is causing problems, by running the command automatically every 1 second as shown below.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword -i 1 processlist
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 20 | root | localhost |    | Sleep   | 36   |       |                  |
| 23 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 24 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

8. How to create a MySQL Database?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword create testdb

# mysql -u root -ptmppassword
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 705
Server version: 5.1.25-rc-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| sugarcrm           |
| testdb             |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Note: To display all tables in a database, total number of columns, row, column types, indexes etc., use the mysqlshow command that we discussed in our previous articles.

9. How to Delete/Drop an existing MySQL database?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword drop testdb
Dropping the database is potentially a very bad thing to do.
Any data stored in the database will be destroyed.

Do you really want to drop the 'testdb' database [y/N] y
Database "testdb" dropped

# mysql -u root -ptmppassword
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 707
Server version: 5.1.25-rc-community MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| sugarcrm           |
+--------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

10. How to reload/refresh the privilege or the grants tables?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword reload;

Refresh command will flush all the tables and close/open log files.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword refresh

11. What is the safe method to shutdown the MySQL server?

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword shutdown

# mysql -u root -ptmppassword
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server
through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock'

Note: You can also use “/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysqld stop” to shutdown the server. To start the server, execute “/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql start”

12. List of all mysqladmin flush commands.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-hosts
# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-logs
# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-privileges
# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-status
# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-tables
# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword flush-threads

• flush-hosts: Flush all information in the host cache.
• flush-privileges: Reload the grant tables (same as reload).
• flush-status: Clear status variables.
• flush-threads: Flush the thread cache.

13. How to kill a hanging MySQL Client Process?

First identify the hanging MySQL client process using the processlist command.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword processlist
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 20 | root | localhost |    | Sleep   | 64   |       |                  |
| 24 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

Now, use the kill command and pass the process_id as shown below. To kill multiple process you can pass comma separated process id’s.

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword kill 20

# mysqladmin -u root -ptmppassword processlist
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 26 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

14. How to start and stop MySQL replication on a slave server?

# mysqladmin  -u root -ptmppassword stop-slave
Slave stopped

# mysqladmin  -u root -ptmppassword start-slave
mysqladmin: Error starting slave: The server is not configured as slave;
fix in config file or with CHANGE MASTER TO

15. How to combine multiple mysqladmin commands together?

In the example below, you can combine process-list, status and version command to get all the output together as shown below.

# mysqladmin  -u root -ptmppassword process status version
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 43 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

Uptime: 3135
Threads: 1  Questions: 80  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 15  Flush tables: 3
Open tables: 0  Queries per second avg: 0.25

mysqladmin  Ver 8.42 Distrib 5.1.25-rc, for redhat-linux-gnu on i686
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          5.1.25-rc-community
Protocol version        10
Connection              Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket             /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:                 52 min 15 sec

You can also use the short form as shown below:

# mysqladmin  -u root -ptmppassword pro stat ver

Use the option -h, to connect to a remote MySQL server and execute the mysqladmin commands as shown below.

# mysqladmin  -h 192.168.1.112 -u root -ptmppassword pro stat ver

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