Table of Contents
Replication capabilities allowing the databases on one MySQL server to be duplicated on another were introduced in MySQL 3.23.15. This chapter describes the various replication features provided by MySQL. It introduces replication concepts, shows how to set up replication servers, and serves as a reference to the available replication options. It also provides a list of frequently asked questions (with answers), and troubleshooting advice for solving problems.
MySQL Enterprise The MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory Service provides numerous advisors that provide immediate feedback about replication-related problems. For more information see, http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.
For a description of the syntax of replication-related SQL statements, see Section聽13.6, 鈥淩eplication Statements鈥.
MySQL 3.23.15 and up features support for one-way, asynchronous replication, in which one server acts as the master, while one or more other servers act as slaves. This is in contrast to the synchronous replication which is a characteristic of MySQL Cluster (see Chapter聽15, MySQL Cluster).
In single-master replication, the master server writes updates to its binary log files and maintains an index of those files to keep track of log rotation. The binary log files serve as a record of updates to be sent to any slave servers. When a slave connects to its master, it informs the master of the position up to which the slave read the logs at its last successful update. The slave receives any updates that have taken place since that time, and then blocks and waits for the master to notify it of new updates.
A slave server can itself serve as a master if you want to set up chained replication servers.
When you are using replication, all updates to the tables that are replicated should be performed on the master server. Otherwise, you must always be careful to avoid conflicts between updates that users make to tables on the master and updates that they make to tables on the slave.
Replication offers benefits for robustness, speed, and system administration:
Robustness is increased with a master/slave setup. In the event of problems with the master, you can switch to the slave as a backup.
Better response time for clients can be achieved by splitting
the load for processing client queries between the master and
slave servers. SELECT
queries may be sent
to the slave to reduce the query processing load of the
master. Statements that modify data should still be sent to
the master so that the master and slave do not get out of
synchrony. This load-balancing strategy is effective if
non-updating queries dominate, but that is the normal case.
Another benefit of using replication is that you can perform database backups using a slave server without disturbing the master. The master continues to process updates while the backup is being made. See Section聽5.9.1, 鈥淒atabase Backups鈥.
MySQL replication is based on the master server keeping track of all changes to your databases (updates, deletes, and so on) in its binary logs. Therefore, to use replication, you must enable binary logging on the master server. See Section聽5.11.4, 鈥淭he Binary Log鈥.
Each slave server receives from the master the saved updates that the master has recorded in its binary log, so that the slave can execute the same updates on its copy of the data.
It is extremely important to realize that the binary log is simply a record starting from the fixed point in time at which you enable binary logging. Any slaves that you set up need copies of the databases on your master as they existed at the moment you enabled binary logging on the master. If you start your slaves with databases that are not in the same state as those on the master when the binary log was started, your slaves are quite likely to fail.
After the slave has been set up with a copy of the master's data,
it connects to the master and waits for updates to process. If the
master fails, or the slave loses connectivity with your master,
the slave keeps trying to connect periodically until it is able to
resume listening for updates. The
--master-connect-retry
option controls the retry
interval. The default is 60 seconds.
Each slave keeps track of where it left off when it last read from its master server. The master has no knowledge of how many slaves it has or which ones are up to date at any given time.
MySQL replication capabilities are implemented using three threads
(one on the master server and two on the slave). When a
START SLAVE
statement is issued on a slave
server, the slave creates an I/O thread, which connects to the
master and asks it to send the updates recorded in its binary
logs. The master creates a thread to send the binary log contents
to the slave. This thread can be identified as the Binlog
Dump
thread in the output of SHOW
PROCESSLIST
on the master. The slave I/O thread reads
the updates that the master Binlog Dump
thread
sends and copies them to local files, known as relay
logs, in the slave's data directory. The third thread
is the SQL thread, which the slave creates to read the relay logs
and to execute the updates they contain.
In the preceding description, there are three threads per master/slave connection. A master that has multiple slaves creates one thread for each currently-connected slave, and each slave has its own I/O and SQL threads.
For versions of MySQL before 4.0.2, replication involves only two threads (one on the master and one on the slave). The slave I/O and SQL threads are combined as a single thread, and no relay log files are used.
The slave uses two threads so that reading updates from the master and executing them can be separated into two independent tasks. Thus, the task of reading statements is not slowed down if statement execution is slow. For example, if the slave server has not been running for a while, its I/O thread can quickly fetch all the binary log contents from the master when the slave starts, even if the SQL thread lags far behind. If the slave stops before the SQL thread has executed all the fetched statements, the I/O thread has at least fetched everything so that a safe copy of the statements is stored locally in the slave's relay logs, ready for execution the next time that the slave starts. This enables the master server to purge its binary logs sooner because it no longer needs to wait for the slave to fetch their contents.
The SHOW PROCESSLIST
statement provides
information that tells you what is happening on the master and on
the slave regarding replication. The following example illustrates
how the three threads show up in the output from SHOW
PROCESSLIST
. The output format is that used by
SHOW PROCESSLIST
as of MySQL version 4.0.15,
when the content of the State
column was
changed to be more meaningful compared to earlier versions.
On the master server, the output from SHOW
PROCESSLIST
looks like this:
mysql> SHOW PROCESSLIST\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Id: 2
User: root
Host: localhost:32931
db: NULL
Command: Binlog Dump
Time: 94
State: Has sent all binlog to slave; waiting for binlog to
be updated
Info: NULL
Here, thread 2 is a Binlog Dump
replication
thread for a connected slave. The State
information indicates that all outstanding updates have been sent
to the slave and that the master is waiting for more updates to
occur. If you see no Binlog Dump
threads on a
master server, this means that replication is not running 鈥
that is, that no slaves are currently connected.
On the slave server, the output from SHOW
PROCESSLIST
looks like this:
mysql> SHOW PROCESSLIST\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Id: 10
User: system user
Host:
db: NULL
Command: Connect
Time: 11
State: Waiting for master to send event
Info: NULL
*************************** 2. row ***************************
Id: 11
User: system user
Host:
db: NULL
Command: Connect
Time: 11
State: Has read all relay log; waiting for the slave I/O
thread to update it
Info: NULL
This information indicates that thread 10 is the I/O thread that
is communicating with the master server, and thread 11 is the SQL
thread that is processing the updates stored in the relay logs. At
the time that the SHOW PROCESSLIST
was run,
both threads were idle, waiting for further updates.
The value in the Time
column can show how late
the slave is compared to the master. See
Section聽6.10, 鈥淩eplication FAQ鈥.
The following list shows the most common states you may see in
the State
column for the master's
Binlog Dump
thread. If you see no
Binlog Dump
threads on a master server, this
means that replication is not running 鈥 that is, that no
slaves are currently connected.
Sending binlog event to slave
Binary logs consist of events, where an event is usually an update plus some other information. The thread has read an event from the binary log and is now sending it to the slave.
Finished reading one binlog; switching to next
binlog
The thread has finished reading a binary log file and is opening the next one to send to the slave.
Has sent all binlog to slave; waiting for binlog to
be updated
The thread has read all outstanding updates from the binary logs and sent them to the slave. The thread is now idle, waiting for new events to appear in the binary log resulting from new updates occurring on the master.
Waiting to finalize termination
A very brief state that occurs as the thread is stopping.
The following list shows the most common states you see in the
State
column for a slave server I/O thread.
Beginning with MySQL 4.1.1, this state also appears in the
Slave_IO_State
column displayed by
SHOW SLAVE STATUS
, so you can get a good view
of what is happening by using that statement.
Connecting to master
The thread is attempting to connect to the master.
Checking master version
A state that occurs very briefly, after the connection to the master is established.
Registering slave on master
A state that occurs very briefly after the connection to the master is established.
Requesting binlog dump
A state that occurs very briefly, after the connection to the master is established. The thread sends to the master a request for the contents of its binary logs, starting from the requested binary log filename and position.
Waiting to reconnect after a failed binlog dump
request
If the binary log dump request failed (due to
disconnection), the thread goes into this state while it
sleeps, then tries to reconnect periodically. The interval
between retries can be specified using the
--master-connect-retry
option.
Reconnecting after a failed binlog dump
request
The thread is trying to reconnect to the master.
Waiting for master to send event
The thread has connected to the master and is waiting for
binary log events to arrive. This can last for a long time
if the master is idle. If the wait lasts for
slave_net_timeout
seconds, a timeout
occurs. At that point, the thread considers the connection
to be broken and makes an attempt to reconnect.
Queueing master event to the relay log
The thread has read an event and is copying it to the relay log so that the SQL thread can process it.
Waiting to reconnect after a failed master event
read
An error occurred while reading (due to disconnection). The
thread is sleeping for
master-connect-retry
seconds before
attempting to reconnect.
Reconnecting after a failed master event
read
The thread is trying to reconnect to the master. When
connection is established again, the state becomes
Waiting for master to send event
.
Waiting for the slave SQL thread to free enough
relay log space
You are using a non-zero
relay_log_space_limit
value, and the
relay logs have grown large enough that their combined size
exceeds this value. The I/O thread is waiting until the SQL
thread frees enough space by processing relay log contents
so that it can delete some relay log files.
Waiting for slave mutex on exit
A state that occurs briefly as the thread is stopping.
The following list shows the most common states you may see in
the State
column for a slave server SQL
thread:
Reading event from the relay log
The thread has read an event from the relay log so that the event can be processed.
Has read all relay log; waiting for the slave I/O
thread to update it
The thread has processed all events in the relay log files, and is now waiting for the I/O thread to write new events to the relay log.
Waiting for slave mutex on exit
A very brief state that occurs as the thread is stopping.
The State
column for the I/O thread may also
show the text of a statement. This indicates that the thread has
read an event from the relay log, extracted the statement from
it, and is executing it.
By default, relay logs filenames have the form
,
where host_name
-relay-bin.nnnnnn
host_name
is the name of the
slave server host and nnnnnn
is a
sequence number. Successive relay log files are created using
successive sequence numbers, beginning with
000001
(001
in MySQL 4.0
or older). The slave uses an index file to track the relay log
files currently in use. The default relay log index filename is
.
By default, the slave server creates relay log files in its data
directory. The default filenames can be overridden with the
host_name
-relay-bin.index--relay-log
and
--relay-log-index
server options. See
Section聽6.8, 鈥淩eplication Startup Options鈥.
Relay logs have the same format as binary logs and can be read
using mysqlbinlog. The SQL thread
automatically deletes each relay log file as soon as it has
executed all events in the file and no longer needs it. There is
no explicit mechanism for deleting relay logs because the SQL
thread takes care of doing so. However, as of MySQL 4.0.14,
FLUSH LOGS
rotates relay logs, which
influences when the SQL thread deletes them.
A slave server creates a new relay log file under the following conditions:
Each time the I/O thread starts.
When the logs are flushed; for example, with FLUSH
LOGS
or mysqladmin flush-logs.
(This creates a new relay log only as of MySQL 4.0.14.)
When the size of the current relay log file becomes too large. The meaning of 鈥too large鈥 is determined as follows:
If the value of max_relay_log_size
is
greater than 0, that is the maximum relay log file size.
If the value of max_relay_log_size
is
0, max_binlog_size
determines the
maximum relay log file size.
max_binlog_size
always determines the
relay log size before MySQL 4.0.14, the first version in
which max_relay_log_size
appears.
A slave replication server creates two additional small files in
the data directory. These status files are
named master.info
and
relay-log.info
by default. Their names can
be changed by using the --master-info-file
and
--relay-log-info-file
options. See
Section聽6.8, 鈥淩eplication Startup Options鈥.
The two status files contain information like that shown in the
output of the SHOW SLAVE STATUS
statement,
which is discussed in Section聽13.6.2, 鈥淪QL Statements for Controlling Slave Servers鈥.
Because the status files are stored on disk, they survive a
slave server's shutdown. The next time the slave starts up, it
reads the two files to determine how far it has proceeded in
reading binary logs from the master and in processing its own
relay logs.
The I/O thread updates the master.info
file. Before MySQL 4.1, the following table shows the
correspondence between the lines in the file and the columns
displayed by SHOW SLAVE STATUS
.
Line | Description |
1 | Master_Log_File |
2 | Read_Master_Log_Pos |
3 | Master_Host |
4 | Master_User |
5 | Password (not shown by SHOW SLAVE STATUS ) |
6 | Master_Port |
7 | Connect_Retry |
As of MySQL 4.1, the file includes a line count and information about SSL options:
Line | Description |
1 | Number of lines in the file |
2 | Master_Log_File |
3 | Read_Master_Log_Pos |
4 | Master_Host |
5 | Master_User |
6 | Password (not shown by SHOW SLAVE STATUS ) |
7 | Master_Port |
8 | Connect_Retry |
9 | Master_SSL_Allowed |
10 | Master_SSL_CA_File |
11 | Master_SSL_CA_Path |
12 | Master_SSL_Cert |
13 | Master_SSL_Cipher |
14 | Master_SSL_Key |
The SQL thread updates the relay-log.info
file. The following table shows the correspondence between the
lines in the file and the columns displayed by SHOW
SLAVE STATUS
.
Line | Description |
1 | Relay_Log_File |
2 | Relay_Log_Pos |
3 | Relay_Master_Log_File |
4 | Exec_Master_Log_Pos |
The contents of the relay-log.info
file and
the states shown by the SHOW SLAVE STATES
command may not match if the relay-log.info
file has not been flushed to disk. Ideally, you should only view
relay-log.info
on a slave that is offline
(i.e. mysqld
is not running). For a running
system, SHOW SLAVE STATUS
should be used.
When you back up the slave's data, you should back up these two
status files as well, along with the relay log files. They are
needed to resume replication after you restore the slave's data.
If you lose the relay logs but still have the
relay-log.info
file, you can check it to
determine how far the SQL thread has executed in the master
binary logs. Then you can use CHANGE MASTER
TO
with the MASTER_LOG_FILE
and
MASTER_LOG_POS
options to tell the slave to
re-read the binary logs from that point. Of course, this
requires that the binary logs still exist on the master server.
If your slave is subject to replicating LOAD DATA
INFILE
statements, you should also back up any
SQL_LOAD-*
files that exist in the
directory that the slave uses for this purpose. The slave needs
these files to resume replication of any interrupted
LOAD DATA INFILE
operations. The directory
location is specified using the
--slave-load-tmpdir
option. If this option is
not specified, the directory location is the value of the
tmpdir
system variable.
This section briefly describes how to set up complete replication of a MySQL server. It assumes that you want to replicate all databases on the master and have not previously configured replication. You must shut down your master server briefly to complete the steps outlined here.
This procedure is written in terms of setting up a single slave, but you can repeat it to set up multiple slaves.
Although this method is the most straightforward way to set up a slave, it is not the only one. For example, if you have a snapshot of the master's data, and the master already has its server ID set and binary logging enabled, you can set up a slave without shutting down the master or even blocking updates to it. For more details, please see Section聽6.10, 鈥淩eplication FAQ鈥.
If you want to administer a MySQL replication setup, we suggest that you read this entire chapter through and try all statements mentioned in Section聽13.6.1, 鈥淪QL Statements for Controlling Master Servers鈥, and Section聽13.6.2, 鈥淪QL Statements for Controlling Slave Servers鈥. You should also familiarize yourself with the replication startup options described in Section聽6.8, 鈥淩eplication Startup Options鈥.
Note: This procedure and some of
the replication SQL statements shown in later sections refer to
the SUPER
privilege. Prior to MySQL 4.0.2, use
the PROCESS
privilege instead.
Make sure that you have a recent version of MySQL installed on the master and slaves, and that these versions are compatible according to the table shown in Section聽6.5, 鈥淩eplication Compatibility Between MySQL Versions鈥.
If you encounter a problem, please do not report it as a bug until you have verified that the problem is present in the latest MySQL release.
Set up an account on the master server that the slave server
can use to connect. This account must be given the
REPLICATION SLAVE
privilege. If the account
is used only for replication (which is recommended), you don't
need to grant any additional privileges.
MySQL Enterprise
Subscribers to the MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory
Service are quickly notified if there is a replication
master and no account with the REPLICATION
SLAVE
privilege. For more information see,
http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.
Suppose that your domain is mydomain.com
and that you want to create an account with a username of
repl
such that slave servers can use the
account to access the master server from any host in your
domain using a password of slavepass
. To
create the account, use this GRANT
statement:
mysql>GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.*
->TO 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass';
For MySQL versions older than 4.0.2, the REPLICATION
SLAVE
privilege does not exist. Grant the
FILE
privilege instead:
mysql>GRANT FILE ON *.*
->TO 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass';
For additional information about setting up user accounts and privileges, see Section聽5.8, 鈥淢ySQL User Account Management鈥.
Flush all the tables and block write statements by executing a
FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK
statement:
mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
For InnoDB
tables, note that FLUSH
TABLES WITH READ LOCK
blocks
COMMIT
operations, too. (This is true as of
MySQL version 4.0.20.) When you have acquired your global read
lock, you can start a filesystem snapshot of your
InnoDB
tables. Internally (inside the
InnoDB
storage engine) the snapshot won't
be consistent (because the InnoDB
caches
are not flushed), but there's no need to worry at all, because
InnoDB
will resolve this at startup, and
consequently deliver a consistent result. This means that
InnoDB
will perform a crash recovery when
started on this snapshot, but it will not be corrupted. If you
want to have a consistent snapshot of your
InnoDB
tables, there's no way around taking
down the MySQL server, though.
Leave running the client from which you issue the
FLUSH TABLES
statement so that the read
lock remains in effect. (If you exit the client, the lock is
released.) Then take a snapshot of the data on your master
server.
The easiest way to create a snapshot is to use an archiving program to make a binary backup of the databases in your master's data directory. For example, use tar on Unix, or PowerArchiver, WinRAR, WinZip, or any similar software on Windows. To use tar to create an archive that includes all databases, change location into the master server's data directory, then execute this command:
shell> tar -cvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar .
If you want the archive to include only a database called
this_db
, use this command instead:
shell> tar -cvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar ./this_db
Then copy the archive file to the /tmp
directory on the slave server host. On that machine, change
location into the slave's data directory, and unpack the
archive file using this command:
shell> tar -xvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar
You may not want to replicate the mysql
database if the slave server has a different set of user
accounts from those that exist on the master. In this case,
you should exclude it from the archive. You also need not
include any log files in the archive, or the
master.info
or
relay-log.info
files.
While the read lock placed by FLUSH TABLES WITH READ
LOCK
is in effect, read the value of the current
binary log name and offset on the master:
mysql > SHOW MASTER STATUS;
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
| File | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
| mysql-bin.003 | 73 | test | manual,mysql |
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
The File
column shows the name of the log
and Position
shows the offset within the
file. In this example, the binary log file is
mysql-bin.003
and the offset is 73. Record
these values. You need them later when you are setting up the
slave. They represent the replication coordinates at which the
slave should begin processing new updates from the master.
If the master has been running previously without binary
logging enabled, the log name and position values displayed by
SHOW MASTER STATUS
or mysqldump
--master-data will be empty. In that case, the
values that you need to use later when specifying the slave's
log file and position are the empty string
(''
) and 4
.
After you have taken the snapshot and recorded the log name and offset, you can re-enable write activity on the master:
mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;
If you are using InnoDB
tables, ideally you
should use the InnoDB
Hot
Backup tool, which takes a consistent snapshot
without acquiring any locks on the master server, and records
the log name and offset corresponding to the snapshot to be
later used on the slave. Hot Backup is an
additional non-free (commercial) tool that is not included in
the standard MySQL distribution. See the
InnoDB
Hot Backup home
page at http://www.innodb.com/manual.php for
detailed information.
Without the Hot Backup tool, the quickest
way to take a binary snapshot of InnoDB
tables is to shut down the master server and copy the
InnoDB
data files, log files, and table
format files (.frm
files). To record the
current log file name and offset, you should issue the
following statements before you shut down the server:
mysql>FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
mysql>SHOW MASTER STATUS;
Then record the log name and the offset from the output of
SHOW MASTER STATUS
as was shown earlier.
After recording the log name and the offset, shut down the
server without unlocking the tables to
make sure that the server goes down with the snapshot
corresponding to the current log file and offset:
shell> mysqladmin -u root shutdown
An alternative that works for both MyISAM
and InnoDB
tables is to take an SQL dump of
the master instead of a binary copy as described in the
preceding discussion. For this, you can use mysqldump
--master-data on your master and later load the SQL
dump file into your slave. However, this is slower than doing
a binary copy.
Make sure that the [mysqld]
section of the
my.cnf
file on the master host includes a
log-bin
option. The section should also
have a
server-id=
option, where master_id
master_id
must be a
positive integer value from 1 to
232 鈥 1. For example:
[mysqld] log-bin=mysql-bin server-id=1
If those options are not present, add them and restart the server. The server cannot act as a replication master unless binary logging is enabled.
For the greatest possible durability and consistency in a
replication setup using InnoDB
with
transactions, you should use
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
,
sync_binlog=1
, and
innodb_safe_binlog
in your master
my.cnf
file.
Stop the server that is to be used as a slave and add the
following lines to its my.cnf
file:
[mysqld]
server-id=slave_id
The slave_id
value, like the
master_id
value, must be a positive
integer value from 1 to 232 鈥
1. In addition, it is necessary that the ID of the slave be
different from the ID of the master. For example:
[mysqld] server-id=2
If you are setting up multiple slaves, each one must have a
unique server-id
value that differs from
that of the master and from each of the other slaves. Think of
server-id
values as something similar to IP
addresses: These IDs uniquely identify each server instance in
the community of replication partners.
If you do not specify a server-id
value, it
is set to 1 if you have not defined
master-host
; otherwise it is set to 2. Note
that in the case of server-id
omission, a
master refuses connections from all slaves, and a slave
refuses to connect to a master. Thus, omitting
server-id
is good only for backup with a
binary log.
If you made a binary backup of the master server's data, copy it to the slave server's data directory before starting the slave. Make sure that the privileges on the files and directories are correct. The system account that you use to run the slave server must be able to read and write the files, just as on the master.
If you made a backup using mysqldump, start the slave first. The dump file is loaded in a later step.
Start the slave server. If it has been replicating previously,
start the slave server with the
--skip-slave-start
option so that it doesn't
immediately try to connect to its master. You also may want to
start the slave server with the
--log-warnings
option to get more messages in
the error log about problems (for example, network or
connection problems). The option is enabled by default as of
MySQL 4.0.19 and 4.1.2, but as of MySQL 4.0.21 and 4.1.3,
aborted connections are not logged to the error log unless the
value is greater than 1.
If you made a backup of the master server's data using mysqldump, load the dump file into the slave server:
shell> mysql -u root -p < dump_file.sql
Execute the following statement on the slave, replacing the option values with the actual values relevant to your system:
mysql>CHANGE MASTER TO
->MASTER_HOST='
->master_host_name
',MASTER_USER='
->replication_user_name
',MASTER_PASSWORD='
->replication_password
',MASTER_LOG_FILE='
->recorded_log_file_name
',MASTER_LOG_POS=
recorded_log_position
;
The following table shows the maximum allowable length for the string-valued options:
MASTER_HOST | 60 |
MASTER_USER | 16 |
MASTER_PASSWORD | 32 |
MASTER_LOG_FILE | 255 |
Start the slave threads:
mysql> START SLAVE;
After you have performed this procedure, the slave should connect to the master and catch up on any updates that have occurred since the snapshot was taken.
If you have forgotten to set the server-id
option for the master, slaves cannot connect to it.
If you have forgotten to set the server-id
option for the slave, you get the following error in the slave's
error log:
Warning: You should set server-id to a non-0 value if master_host is set; we will force server id to 2, but this MySQL server will not act as a slave.
You also find error messages in the slave's error log if it is not able to replicate for any other reason.
Once a slave is replicating, you can find in its data directory
one file named master.info
and another named
relay-log.info
. The slave uses these two
files to keep track of how much of the master's binary log it has
processed. Do not remove or edit these files
unless you know exactly what you are doing and fully understand
the implications. Even in that case, it is preferred that you use
the CHANGE MASTER TO
statement to change
replication parameters. The slave will use the values specified in
the statement to update the status files automatically.
Note: The content of
master.info
overrides some of the server
options specified on the command line or in
my.cnf
. See
Section聽6.8, 鈥淩eplication Startup Options鈥, for more details.
Once you have a snapshot of the master, you can use it to set up other slaves by following the slave portion of the procedure just described. You do not need to take another snapshot of the master; you can use the same one for each slave.
The original binary log format was developed in MySQL 3.23. It was changed in MySQL 4.0.
Note: You cannot replicate from a master that uses a newer binary log format to a slave that uses an older format (for example, from MySQL 4.1 to MySQL 3.23.) This has significant consequences for upgrading servers in a replication setup, as described in Section聽6.6, 鈥淯pgrading a Replication Setup鈥.
As far as replication is concerned, the binary log format for any MySQL 4.1.x version and any 4.0.x version is identical. However, replication from a 4.1 master to a 4.0 slave is unsupported, has not been tested thoroughly, and no further development or bug fixing is planned for this master/slave combination. Although the binary log format is the same for 4.0 and 4.1, there are other constraints, such as SQL-level compatibility issues. For example, a 4.1 master cannot replicate to a 4.0 slave if the replicated statements use SQL features available in 4.1 but not 4.0. These and other issues are discussed in Section聽6.7, 鈥淩eplication Features and Known Problems鈥.
As a general rule, we recommended using recent MySQL versions, because replication capabilities are continually being improved. We also recommend using the same version for both the master and the slave. We recommend upgrading masters and slaves running alpha or beta versions to new versions.
When you upgrade servers that participate in a replication setup, the procedure for upgrading depends on the current server versions and the version to which you are upgrading.
This section applies to upgrading replication from MySQL 3.23 to 4.0 or 4.1. A 4.0 server should be 4.0.3 or newer, as mentioned in Section聽6.5, 鈥淩eplication Compatibility Between MySQL Versions鈥.
When you upgrade a master from MySQL 3.23 to MySQL 4.0 or 4.1, you should first ensure that all the slaves of this master are at 4.0 or 4.1. If that is not the case, you should first upgrade your slaves: Shut down each one, upgrade it, restart it, and restart replication.
The upgrade can safely be done using the following procedure, assuming that you have a 3.23 master to upgrade and the slaves are 4.0 or 4.1. Note that after the master has been upgraded, you should not restart replication using any old 3.23 binary logs, because this unfortunately confuses the 4.0 or 4.1 slaves.
Block all updates on the master by issuing a FLUSH
TABLES WITH READ LOCK
statement.
Wait until all the slaves have caught up with all changes
from the master server. Use SHOW MASTER
STATUS
on the master to obtain its current binary
log file and position. Then, for each slave, use those
values with a SELECT MASTER_POS_WAIT()
statement. The statement blocks on the slave and returns
when the slave has caught up. Then run STOP
SLAVE
on the slave.
Stop the master server and upgrade it to MySQL 4.0 or 4.1.
Restart the master server and record the name of its newly
created binary log. You can obtain the name of the file by
issuing a SHOW MASTER STATUS
statement on
the master. Then issue these statements on each slave:
mysql>CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_LOG_FILE='binary_log_name',
->MASTER_LOG_POS=4;
mysql>START SLAVE;
In general, replication compatibility at the SQL level requires
that any features used be supported by both the master and the
slave servers. If you use a feature on a master server that is
available only as of a given version of MySQL, you cannot
replicate to a slave that is older than that version. Such
incompatibilities are likely to occur between series, so that, for
example, you cannot replicate from MySQL 4.1 to
4.0. However, these incompatibilities also can occur
for within-series replication. For example, the
CONVERT_TZ()
function is available in MySQL
4.1.3 and up. If you use this function on the master server, you
cannot replicate to a slave server that is older than MySQL 4.1.3.
The following list provides details about what is supported and
what is not. Additional InnoDB
-specific
information about replication is given in
Section聽14.2.7.5, 鈥InnoDB
and MySQL Replication鈥.
Replication of AUTO_INCREMENT
,
LAST_INSERT_ID()
, and
TIMESTAMP
values is done correctly, subject
to the following exceptions.
INSERT DELAYED ... VALUES(LAST_INSERT_ID())
inserts a different value on the master and the slave. (Bug#20819)
Adding an AUTO_INCREMENT
column to a table
with ALTER TABLE
might not produce the same
ordering of the rows on the slave and the master. This occurs
because the order in which the rows are numbered depends on
the specific storage engine used for the table and the order
in which the rows were inserted. If it is important to have
the same order on the master and slave, the rows must be
ordered before assigning an AUTO_INCREMENT
number. Assuming that you want to add an
AUTO_INCREMENT
column to the table
t1
, the following statements produce a new
table t2
identical to t1
but with an AUTO_INCREMENT
column:
CREATE TABLE t2 LIKE t1; ALTER TABLE t2 ADD id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY; INSERT INTO t2 SELECT * FROM t1 ORDER BY col1, col2;
This assumes that the table t1
has columns
col1
and col2
.
Important: To guarantee the
same ordering on both master and slave,
all columns of t1
must
be referenced in the ORDER BY
clause.
The instructions just given are subject to the limitations of
CREATE TABLE ... LIKE
: Foreign key
definitions are ignored, as are the DATA
DIRECTORY
and INDEX DIRECTORY
table options. If a table definition includes any of those
characteristics, create t2
using a
CREATE TABLE
statement that is identical to
the one used to create t1
, but with the
addition of the AUTO_INCREMENT
column.
Regardless of the method used to create and populate the copy
having the AUTO_INCREMENT
column, the final
step is to drop the original table and then rename the copy:
DROP t1; ALTER TABLE t2 RENAME t1;
The USER()
,
CURRENT_USER()
, UUID()
,
and LOAD_FILE()
functions are replicated
without change and thus do not work reliably on the slave.
This is also true for CONNECTION_ID()
in
slave versions older than 4.1.1. The
new
PASSWORD()
function in MySQL 4.1 is well
replicated in masters from 4.1.1 and up; your slaves also must
be 4.1.1 or above to replicate it. If you have older slaves
and need to replicate PASSWORD()
from your
4.1.x master, you must start your master with the
--old-password
option, so that it uses the
old implementation of PASSWORD()
. (Note
that the PASSWORD()
implementation in MySQL
4.1.0 differs from every other version of MySQL. It is best to
avoid 4.1.0 in a replication scenario.)
The GET_LOCK()
,
RELEASE_LOCK()
,
IS_FREE_LOCK()
, and
IS_USED_LOCK()
functions that handle
user-level locks are replicated without the slave knowing the
concurrency context on master. Therefore, these functions
should not be used to insert into a master's table because the
content on the slave would differ. (For example, do not issue
a statement such as INSERT INTO mytable
VALUES(GET_LOCK(...))
.)
User privileges are replicated only if the
mysql
database is replicated. That is, the
GRANT
, REVOKE
,
SET PASSWORD
, and DROP
USER
(available as of MySQL 4.1.1) statements take
effect on the slave only if the replication setup includes the
mysql
database.
If you're replicating all databases, but don't want statements
that affect user privileges to be replicated, set up the slave
to not replicate the mysql
database, using
the --replicate-wild-ignore-table=mysql.%
option. That option is available as of MySQL 4.0.13. The slave
will recognize that issuing privilege-related SQL statements
won't have an effect, and thus not execute those statements.
The FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS
variable is
replicated as of MySQL 4.0.14. The
SQL_MODE
, UNIQUE_CHECKS
,
SQL_AUTO_IS_NULL
, and
storage_engine
(also known as
table_type
) variables are not replicated in
MySQL 4.1 or earlier versions.
The following applies to replication between MySQL servers that use different character sets:
You must always use the same
global character set and collation on
the master and the slave. (These are controlled by the
--character-set-server
and
--collation-server
options.) Otherwise,
you may get duplicate-key errors on the slave, because a
key that is unique in the master character set might not
be unique in the slave character set.
If the master is older than MySQL 4.1.3, the character set
of any client should never be made different from its
global value because this character set change is not
known to the slave. In other words, clients should not use
SET NAMES
, SET CHARACTER
SET
, and so forth. If both the master and the
slave are 4.1.3 or newer, clients can freely set session
values for character set variables because these settings
are written to the binary log and so are known to the
slave. That is, clients can use SET
NAMES
or SET CHARACTER SET
or
can set variables such as
collation_client
or
collation_server
. However, clients are
prevented from changing the global
value of these variables; as stated previously, the master
and slave must always have identical global character set
values.
If on the master you have databases with different
character sets from the global
collation_server
value, you should
design your CREATE TABLE
statements so
that they do not implicitly rely on the default database's
character set, because there currently is a bug (Bug#2326); a good workaround is to state the character set
and collation explicitly in CREATE
TABLE
.
The same system time zone should be set for both master and
slave. Otherwise some statements will not be replicated
properly, such as statements that use the
NOW()
or FROM_UNIXTIME()
functions. You can set the time zone in which MySQL server
runs by using the
--timezone=
option of the timezone_name
mysqld_safe
script or by
setting the TZ
environment variable. Also
starting from version 4.1.3 both master and slave should have
the same default connection time zone set, that is the
--default-time-zone
parameter should have the
same value for both master and slave.
CONVERT_TZ(...,...,@@global.time_zone)
is
not properly replicated.
Session variables are not replicated properly when used in
statements which update tables; for example: SET
MAX_JOIN_SIZE=1000; INSERT INTO mytable
VALUES(@@MAX_JOIN_SIZE);
will not insert the same
data on the master and on the slave.
It is possible to replicate transactional tables on the master
using non-transactional tables on the slave. For example, you
can replicate an InnoDB
master table as a
MyISAM
slave table. However, if you do
this, there are problems if the slave is stopped in the middle
of a BEGIN
/COMMIT
block
because the slave restarts at the beginning of the
BEGIN
block.
Update statements that refer to user-defined variables (that
is, variables of the form
@
) are
badly replicated in 3.23 and 4.0. This is fixed in 4.1.
var_name
The slave can connect to the master using SSL if both are 4.1.1 or newer.
Starting from MySQL 4.1.11, there is a global system variable
slave_transaction_retries
: If the
replication slave SQL thread fails to execute a transaction
because of an InnoDB
deadlock or because it
exceeded the InnoDB
innodb_lock_wait_timeout
or the NDBCluster
TransactionDeadlockDetectionTimeout
or
TransactionInactiveTimeout
value, the
transaction automatically retries
slave_transaction_retries
times before
stopping with an error. The default value is 0 in MySQL 4.1.
Starting from MySQL 4.1.11, the total retry count can be seen
in SHOW STATUS
; see
Section聽5.2.5, 鈥淪tatus Variables鈥.
If a DATA DIRECTORY
or INDEX
DIRECTORY
table option is used in a CREATE
TABLE
statement on the master server, the table
option is also used on the slave. This can cause problems if
no corresponding directory exists in the slave host filesystem
or if it exists but is not accessible to the slave server. As
of MySQL 4.0.15, there is an sql_mode
option called NO_DIR_IN_CREATE
. If the
slave server is run with this SQL mode enabled, it ignores the
DATA DIRECTORY
and INDEX
DIRECTORY
table options when replicating
CREATE TABLE
statements. The result is that
MyISAM
data and index files are created in
the table's database directory.
It is possible for the data on the master and slave to become different if a statement is designed in such a way that the data modification is non-deterministic; that is, left to the will of the query optimizer. (This is in general not a good practice, even outside of replication.) For a detailed explanation of this issue, see Section聽A.1.8.4, 鈥淥pen Issues in MySQL鈥.
If on the master a LOAD DATA INFILE
is
interrupted (for example, by a integrity constraint violation
or a killed connection), the slave skips this LOAD
DATA INFILE
entirely. This means that if this
command permanently inserted or updated table records before
being interrupted, these modifications are
not replicated to the slave.
LOAD DATA INFILE
does not replicate
correctly when --binlog-do-db
is used. (Bug#19662)
Before MySQL 4.1.1, the FLUSH
,
ANALYZE TABLE
, OPTIMIZE
TABLE
, and REPAIR TABLE
statements are not written to the binary log and thus are not
replicated to the slaves. This is not normally a problem
because these statements do not modify table data. However, it
can cause difficulties under certain circumstances. If you
replicate the privilege tables in the mysql
database and update those tables directly without using the
GRANT
statement, you must issue a
FLUSH PRIVILEGES
statement on your slaves
to put the new privileges into effect. Also if you use
FLUSH TABLES
when renaming a
MyISAM
table that is part of a
MERGE
table, you have to issue
FLUSH TABLES
manually on the slaves. As of
MySQL 4.1.1, these statements are written to the binary log
(unless you specify NO_WRITE_TO_BINLOG
, or
its alias LOCAL
). Exceptions are that
FLUSH LOGS
, FLUSH
MASTER
, FLUSH SLAVE
, and
FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK
are not logged
in any case. (Any of these may cause problems if replicated to
a slave.) For a syntax example, see Section聽13.5.5.2, 鈥FLUSH
Syntax鈥.
MySQL 4.1 and earlier support only replication scenarios involving one master and many slaves.
When a server shuts down and restarts, its
MEMORY
(HEAP
) tables
become empty. As of MySQL 4.0.18, the master replicates this
effect to slaves as follows: The first time that the master
uses each MEMORY
table after startup, it
logs an event that notifies the slaves that the table needs to
be emptied by writing a DELETE
statement
for that table to the binary log. See
Section聽14.4, 鈥淭he MEMORY
(HEAP
) Storage Engine鈥, for more information
about MEMORY
tables.
Temporary tables are replicated except in the case where you shut down the slave server (not just the slave threads) and you have replicated temporary tables that are used in updates that have not yet been executed on the slave. If you shut down the slave server, the temporary tables needed by those updates are no longer available when the slave is restarted. To avoid this problem, do not shut down the slave while it has temporary tables open. Instead, use the following procedure:
Issue a STOP SLAVE
statement.
Use SHOW STATUS
to check the value of
the Slave_open_temp_tables
variable.
If the value is 0, issue a mysqladmin shutdown command to stop the slave.
If the value is not 0, restart the slave threads with
START SLAVE
.
Repeat the procedure later until the
Slave_open_temp_tables
variable is 0
and you can stop the slave.
The syntax for multiple-table DELETE
statements that use table aliases changed between MySQL 4.0
and 4.1. In MySQL 4.0, you should use the true table name to
refer to any table from which rows should be deleted:
DELETE test FROM test AS t1, test2 WHERE ...
In MySQL 4.1, you must use the alias:
DELETE t1 FROM test AS t1, test2 WHERE ...
If you use such DELETE
statements, the
change in syntax means that a 4.0 master cannot replicate to
4.1 (or higher) slaves.
It is safe to connect servers in a circular master/slave
relationship if you use the
--log-slave-updates
option. That means that
you can create a setup such as this:
A -> B -> C -> A
However, many statements do not work correctly in this kind of setup unless your client code is written to take care of the potential problems that can occur from updates that occur in different sequence on different servers.
Server IDs are encoded in binary log events, so server A knows
when an event that it reads was originally created by itself
and does not execute the event (unless server A was started
with the --replicate-same-server-id
option,
which is meaningful only in rare cases). Thus, there are no
infinite loops. This type of circular setup works only if you
perform no conflicting updates between the tables. In other
words, if you insert data in both A and C, you should never
insert a row in A that may have a key that conflicts with a
row inserted in C. You should also not update the same rows on
two servers if the order in which the updates are applied is
significant.
If a statement on a slave produces an error, the slave SQL
thread terminates, and the slave writes a message to its error
log. You should then connect to the slave manually and
determine the cause of the problem. (SHOW SLAVE
STATUS
is useful for this.) Then fix the problem
(for example, you might need to create a non-existent table)
and run START SLAVE
.
It is safe to shut down a master server and restart it later.
When a slave loses its connection to the master, the slave
tries to reconnect immediately and retries periodically if
that fails. The default is to retry every 60 seconds. This may
be changed with the --master-connect-retry
option. A slave also is able to deal with network connectivity
outages. However, the slave notices the network outage only
after receiving no data from the master for
slave_net_timeout
seconds. If your outages
are short, you may want to decrease
slave_net_timeout
. See
Section聽5.2.3, 鈥淪ystem Variables鈥.
Shutting down the slave (cleanly) is also safe because it
keeps track of where it left off. Unclean shutdowns might
produce problems, especially if the disk cache was not flushed
to disk before the system went down. Your system fault
tolerance is greatly increased if you have a good
uninterruptible power supply. Unclean shutdowns of the master
may cause inconsistencies between the content of tables and
the binary log in master; this can be avoided by using
InnoDB
tables and the
--innodb-safe-binlog
option on the master.
See Section聽5.11.4, 鈥淭he Binary Log鈥.
A crash on the master side can result in the master's binary
log having a final position less than the most recent position
read by the slave, due to the master's binary log file not
being flushed. This can cause the slave not to be able to
replicate when the master comes back up. Setting
sync_binlog=1
in the master
my.cnf
file helps to minimize this
problem because it causes the master to flush its binary log
more frequently.
Due to the non-transactional nature of
MyISAM
tables, it is possible to have a
statement that only partially updates a table and returns an
error code. This can happen, for example, on a multiple-row
insert that has one row violating a key constraint, or if a
long update statement is killed after updating some of the
rows. If that happens on the master, the slave thread exits
and waits for the database administrator to decide what to do
about it unless the error code is legitimate and execution of
the statement results in the same error code on the slave. If
this error code validation behavior is not desirable, some or
all errors can be masked out (ignored) with the
--slave-skip-errors
option. This option is
available starting with MySQL 3.23.47.
If you update transactional tables from non-transactional
tables inside a
BEGIN
/COMMIT
sequence,
updates to the binary log may be out of synchrony with table
states if the non-transactional table is updated before the
transaction commits. This occurs because the transaction is
written to the binary log only when it is committed.
You should not use transactions in a replication environment that update both transactional and non-transactional tables.
Before version 4.0.15, any update to a non-transactional table
is written to the binary log at once when the update is made,
whereas transactional updates are written on
COMMIT
or not written at all if you use
ROLLBACK
. You must take this into account
when updating both transactional tables and non-transactional
tables within the same transaction. (This is true not only for
replication, but also if you are using binary logging for
backups.)
As of version 4.0.15, we changed the logging behavior for
transactions that mix updates to transactional and
non-transactional tables, which solves the problems (order of
statements is good in the binary log, and all needed
statements are written to the binary log even in case of
ROLLBACK
). The problem that remains is that
when a second connection updates the non-transactional table
while the first connection's transaction is not finished yet,
incorrect ordering can still occur because the second
connection's update is written immediately after it is done.
When a 4.x slave replicates a LOAD DATA
INFILE
from a 3.23 master, the values of the
Exec_Master_Log_Pos
and
Relay_Log_Space
columns of SHOW
SLAVE STATUS
become incorrect. The inaccuracy in
Exec_Master_Log_Pos
causes problems when
you stop and restart replication; so it is a good idea to
correct the value before this, by doing FLUSH
LOGS
on the master.
The following table lists replication problems in MySQL 3.23 that are fixed in MySQL 4.0:
LOAD DATA INFILE
is handled properly, as
long as the data file still resides on the master server at
the time of update propagation.
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE
is no longer skipped
on the slave as it was in 3.23.
In 3.23, RAND()
in updates does not
replicate properly. Use
RAND(some_non_rand_expr)
if you are
replicating updates with RAND()
. You can,
for example, use UNIX_TIMESTAMP()
as the
argument to RAND()
.
Floating-point values are approximate, so comparisons involving them are inexact. This is true for operations that use floating-point values explicitly, or values that are converted to floating-point implicitly. Comparisons of floating-point values might yield different results on master and slave servers due to differences in computer architecture, the compiler used to build MySQL, and so forth. See Section聽12.2.2, 鈥淭ype Conversion in Expression Evaluation鈥, and Section聽A.1.5.8, 鈥淧roblems with Floating-Point Comparisons鈥.
This section describes the options that you can use on slave replication servers. You can specify these options either on the command line or in an option file.
On the master and each slave, you must use the
server-id
option to establish a unique
replication ID. For each server, you should pick a unique positive
integer in the range from 1 to 232
鈥 1, and each ID must be different from every other ID.
Example: server-id=3
Options that you can use on the master server for controlling binary logging are described in Section聽5.11.4, 鈥淭he Binary Log鈥.
Some slave server replication options are handled in a special
way, in the sense that each is ignored if a
master.info
file exists when the slave starts
and contains a value for the option. The following options are
handled this way:
--master-host
--master-user
--master-password
--master-port
--master-connect-retry
As of MySQL 4.1.1, the following options also are handled specially:
--master-ssl
--master-ssl-ca
--master-ssl-capath
--master-ssl-cert
--master-ssl-cipher
--master-ssl-key
The master.info
file format in 4.1.1 changed
to include values corresponding to the SSL options. In addition,
the 4.1.1 file format includes as its first line the number of
lines in the file. (See Section聽6.3.4, 鈥淩eplication Relay and Status Files鈥.) If you
upgrade an older server to 4.1.1, the new server upgrades the
master.info
file to the new format
automatically when it starts. However, if you downgrade a 4.1.1 or
newer server to a version older than 4.1.1, you should manually
remove the first line before starting the older server for the
first time. Note that, in this case, the downgraded server no
longer can use an SSL connection to communicate with the master.
If no master.info
file exists when the slave
server starts, it uses the values for those options that are
specified in option files or on the command line. This occurs when
you start the server as a replication slave for the very first
time, or when you have run RESET SLAVE
and then
have shut down and restarted the slave.
If the master.info
file exists when the slave
server starts, the server uses its contents and ignores any
options that correspond to the values listed in the file. Thus, if
you start the slave server with different values of the startup
options that correspond to values in the
master.info
file, the different values have
no effect, because the server continues to use the
master.info
file. To use different values,
you must either restart after removing the
master.info
file or (preferably) use the
CHANGE MASTER TO
statement to reset the values
while the slave is running.
Suppose that you specify this option in your
my.cnf
file:
[mysqld]
master-host=some_host
The first time you start the server as a replication slave, it
reads and uses that option from the my.cnf
file. The server then records the value in the
master.info
file. The next time you start the
server, it reads the master host value from the
master.info
file only and ignores the value
in the option file. If you modify the my.cnf
file to specify a different master host of
some_other_host
, the change still has
no effect. You should use CHANGE MASTER TO
instead.
Because the server gives an existing
master.info
file precedence over the startup
options just described, you might prefer not to use startup
options for these values at all, and instead specify them by using
the CHANGE MASTER TO
statement. See
Section聽13.6.2.1, 鈥CHANGE MASTER TO
Syntax鈥.
This example shows a more extensive use of startup options to configure a slave server:
[mysqld] server-id=2 master-host=db-master.mycompany.com master-port=3306 master-user=pertinax master-password=freitag master-connect-retry=60 report-host=db-slave.mycompany.com
The following list describes startup options for controlling
replication. Many of these options can be reset while the server
is running by using the CHANGE MASTER TO
statement. Others, such as the --replicate-*
options, can be set only when the slave server starts.
Normally, a slave does not log to its own binary log any
updates that are received from a master server. This option
tells the slave to log the updates performed by its SQL thread
to its own binary log. For this option to have any effect, the
slave must also be started with the --log-bin
option to enable binary logging.
--log-slave-updates
is used when you want to
chain replication servers. For example, you might want to set
up replication servers using this arrangement:
A -> B -> C
Here, A serves as the master for the slave B, and B serves as
the master for the slave C. For this to work, B must be both a
master and a slave. You must start both A
and B with --log-bin
to enable binary
logging, and B with the --log-slave-updates
option so that updates received from A are logged by B to its
binary log.
This option causes a server to print more messages to the
error log about what it is doing. With respect to replication,
the server generates warnings that it succeeded in
reconnecting after a network/connection failure, and informs
you as to how each slave thread started. This option is
enabled by default as of MySQL 4.0.19 and 4.1.2; to disable
it, use --skip-log-warnings
. As of MySQL
4.0.21 and 4.1.3, aborted connections are not logged to the
error log unless the value is greater than 1.
Note that the effects of this option are not limited to replication. It produces warnings across a spectrum of server activities.
--master-connect-retry=
seconds
The number of seconds that the slave thread sleeps before
trying to reconnect to the master in case the master goes down
or the connection is lost. The value in the
master.info
file takes precedence if it
can be read. If not set, the default is 60. Connection retries
are not invoked until the slave times out reading data from
the master according to the value of
--slave-net-timeout
. The number of
reconnection attempts is limited by the
--master-retry-count
option.
The hostname or IP number of the master replication server.
The value in master.info
takes precedence
if it can be read. If no master host is specified, the slave
thread does not start.
The name to use for the file in which the slave records
information about the master. The default name is
master.info
in the data directory.
The password of the account that the slave thread uses for
authentication when it connects to the master. The value in
the master.info
file takes precedence if
it can be read. If not set, an empty password is assumed.
The TCP/IP port number that the master is listening on. The
value in the master.info
file takes
precedence if it can be read. If not set, the compiled-in
setting is assumed (normally 3306).
The number of times that the slave tries to connect to the
master before giving up. Reconnects are attempted at intervals
set by --master-connect-retry
and reconnects
are triggered when data reads by the slave time out according
to the --slave-net-timeout
option. The
default value is 86400.
--master-ssl
,
--master-ssl-ca=
,
file_name
--master-ssl-capath=
,
directory_name
--master-ssl-cert=
,
file_name
--master-ssl-cipher=
,
cipher_list
--master-ssl-key=
file_name
These options are used for setting up a secure replication
connection to the master server using SSL. Their meanings are
the same as the corresponding --ssl
,
--ssl-ca
, --ssl-capath
,
--ssl-cert
, --ssl-cipher
,
--ssl-key
options that are described in
Section聽5.8.7.3, 鈥淪SL Command Options鈥. The values in the
master.info
file take precedence if they
can be read.
These options are operational as of MySQL 4.1.1.
The username of the account that the slave thread uses for
authentication when it connects to the master. This account
must have the REPLICATION SLAVE
privilege.
FILE
privilege instead.) The value in the
master.info
file takes precedence if it
can be read. If the master username is not set, the name
test
is assumed.
The size at which the server rotates relay log files automatically. For more information, see Section聽6.3.4, 鈥淩eplication Relay and Status Files鈥. Default is 1GB.
This option is available as of MySQL 4.0.14.
When this option is given, the server allows no updates except
from users that have the SUPER
privilege or
(on a slave server) from updates performed by slave threads.
On a slave server, this can be useful to ensure that the slave
accepts updates only from its master server and not from
clients. TEMPORARY
tables.
This option is available as of MySQL 4.0.14.
The name for the relay log. The default name is
,
where host_name
-relay-bin.nnnnnn
host_name
is the name of the
slave server host and nnnnnn
indicates that relay logs are created in numbered sequence.
You can specify the option to create hostname-independent
relay log names, or if your relay logs tend to be big (and you
don't want to decrease max_relay_log_size
)
and you need to put them in some area different from the data
directory, or if you want to increase speed by balancing load
between disks.
The name to use for the relay log index file. The default name
is
in the data directory, where
host_name
-relay-bin.indexhost_name
is the name of the slave
server.
--relay-log-info-file=
file_name
The name to use for the file in which the slave records
information about the relay logs. The default name is
relay-log.info
in the data directory.
Disable or enable automatic purging of relay logs as soon as
they are not needed any more. The default value is 1
(enabled). This is a global variable that can be changed
dynamically with SET GLOBAL relay_log_purge =
.
N
This option is available as of MySQL 4.1.1.
This option places an upper limit on the total size in bytes
of all relay logs on the slave. A value of 0 means 鈥no
limit.鈥 This is useful for a slave server host that has
limited disk space. When the limit is reached, the I/O thread
stops reading binary log events from the master server until
the SQL thread has caught up and deleted some unused relay
logs. Note that this limit is not absolute: There are cases
where the SQL thread needs more events before it can delete
relay logs. In that case, the I/O thread exceeds the limit
until it becomes possible for the SQL thread to delete some
relay logs, because not doing so would cause a deadlock (which
is what happens before MySQL 4.0.13). You should not set
--relay-log-space-limit
to less than twice
the value of --max-relay-log-size
(or
--max-binlog-size
if
--max-relay-log-size
is 0). In that case,
there is a chance that the I/O thread waits for free space
because --relay-log-space-limit
is exceeded,
but the SQL thread has no relay log to purge and is unable to
satisfy the I/O thread. This forces the I/O thread to
temporarily ignore --relay-log-space-limit
.
Tell the slave to restrict replication to statements where the
default database (that is, the one selected by
USE
) is db_name
.
To specify more than one database, use this option multiple
times, once for each database. Note that this does not
replicate cross-database statements such as UPDATE
while having selected a different database
or no database.
some_db.some_table
SET
foo='bar'
To specify multiple databases you must use multiple instances of this option. Because database names can contain commas, if you supply a comma separated list then the list will be treated as the name of a single database.
An example of what does not work as you might expect: If the
slave is started with --replicate-do-db=sales
and you issue the following statements on the master, the
UPDATE
statement is
not replicated:
USE prices; UPDATE sales.january SET amount=amount+1000;
The main reason for this
鈥check-just-the-default-database鈥 behavior is
that it's difficult from the statement alone to know whether
it should be replicated (for example, if you are using
multiple-table DELETE
or multiple-table
UPDATE
statements that go across multiple
databases). It is also faster to check only the default
database rather than all databases if there is no need.
If you need cross-database updates to work, make sure that you
have MySQL 3.23.28 or later, and use
--replicate-wild-do-table=
instead. See Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
db_name
.%
--replicate-do-table=
db_name.tbl_name
Tell the slave thread to restrict replication to the specified
table. To specify more than one table, use this option
multiple times, once for each table. This works for
cross-database updates, in contrast to
--replicate-do-db
. See
Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
Tells the slave to not replicate any statement where the
default database (that is, the one selected by
USE
) is db_name
.
To specify more than one database to ignore, use this option
multiple times, once for each database. You should not use
this option if you are using cross-database updates and you do
not want these updates to be replicated. See
Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
An example of what does not work as you might expect: If the
slave is started with
--replicate-ignore-db=sales
and you issue the
following statements on the master, the
UPDATE
statement is
replicated:
USE prices; UPDATE sales.january SET amount=amount+1000;
In the preceding example the statement is replicated because
--replicate-ignore-db
only applies to the
default database (set through the USE
statement). Because the sales
database
was specified explicitly in the statement, the statement has
not been filtered.
If you need cross-database updates to work, use
--replicate-wild-ignore-table=
instead. See Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
db_name
.%
--replicate-ignore-table=
db_name.tbl_name
Tells the slave thread to not replicate any statement that
updates the specified table, even if any other tables might be
updated by the same statement. To specify more than one table
to ignore, use this option multiple times, once for each
table. This works for cross-database updates, in contrast to
--replicate-ignore-db
. See
Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
--replicate-rewrite-db=
from_name
->to_name
Tells the slave to translate the default database (that is,
the one selected by USE
) to
to_name
if it was
from_name
on the master. Only
statements involving tables are affected (not statements such
as CREATE DATABASE
, DROP
DATABASE
, and ALTER DATABASE
),
and only if from_name
is the
default database on the master. This does not work for
cross-database updates. The database name translation is done
before the --replicate-*
rules are tested.
If you use this option on the command line and the
鈥>
鈥 character is special to
your command interpreter, quote the option value. For example:
shell> mysqld --replicate-rewrite-db="olddb
->newdb
"
To be used on slave servers. Usually you should use the
default setting of 0, to prevent infinite loops caused by
circular replication. If set to 1, the slave does not skip
events having its own server ID. Normally, this is useful only
in rare configurations. Cannot be set to 1 if
--log-slave-updates
is used. Be careful that
starting from MySQL 4.1, by default the slave I/O thread does
not even write binary log events to the relay log if they have
the slave's server id (this optimization helps save disk usage
compared to 4.0). So if you want to use
--replicate-same-server-id
in 4.1 versions,
be sure to start the slave with this option before you make
the slave read its own events that you want the slave SQL
thread to execute.
--replicate-wild-do-table=
db_name.tbl_name
Tells the slave thread to restrict replication to statements
where any of the updated tables match the specified database
and table name patterns. Patterns can contain the
鈥%
鈥 and
鈥_
鈥 wildcard characters, which
have the same meaning as for the LIKE
pattern-matching operator. To specify more than one table, use
this option multiple times, once for each table. This works
for cross-database updates. See
Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
Example: --replicate-wild-do-table=foo%.bar%
replicates only updates that use a table where the database
name starts with foo
and the table name
starts with bar
.
If the table name pattern is %
, it matches
any table name and the option also applies to database-level
statements (CREATE DATABASE
, DROP
DATABASE
, and ALTER DATABASE
).
For example, if you use
--replicate-wild-do-table=foo%.%
,
database-level statements are replicated if the database name
matches the pattern foo%
.
To include literal wildcard characters in the database or
table name patterns, escape them with a backslash. For
example, to replicate all tables of a database that is named
my_own%db
, but not replicate tables from
the my1ownAABCdb
database, you should
escape the 鈥_
鈥 and
鈥%
鈥 characters like this:
--replicate-wild-do-table=my\_own\%db
. If
you're using the option on the command line, you might need to
double the backslashes or quote the option value, depending on
your command interpreter. For example, with the
bash shell, you would need to type
--replicate-wild-do-table=my\\_own\\%db
.
--replicate-wild-ignore-table=
db_name.tbl_name
Tells the slave thread not to replicate a statement where any table matches the given wildcard pattern. To specify more than one table to ignore, use this option multiple times, once for each table. This works for cross-database updates. See Section聽6.9, 鈥淗ow Servers Evaluate Replication Rules鈥.
Example:
--replicate-wild-ignore-table=foo%.bar%
does
not replicate updates that use a table where the database name
starts with foo
and the table name starts
with bar
.
For information about how matching works, see the description
of the --replicate-wild-do-table
option. The
rules for including literal wildcard characters in the option
value are the same as for
--replicate-wild-ignore-table
as well.
The hostname or IP number of the slave to be reported to the
master during slave registration. This value appears in the
output of SHOW SLAVE HOSTS
on the master
server. Leave the value unset if you do not want the slave to
register itself with the master. Note that it is not
sufficient for the master to simply read the IP number of the
slave from the TCP/IP socket after the slave connects. Due to
NAT and other routing issues, that IP may not be valid for
connecting to the slave from the master or other hosts.
This option is available as of MySQL 4.0.0.
The account password of the slave to be reported to the master
during slave registration. This value appears in the output of
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS
on the master server if
the --show-slave-auth-info
option is given.
The TCP/IP port number for connecting to the slave, to be reported to the master during slave registration. Set this only if the slave is listening on a non-default port or if you have a special tunnel from the master or other clients to the slave. If you are not sure, do not use this option.
This option is available as of MySQL 4.0.0.
The account username of the slave to be reported to the master
during slave registration. This value appears in the output of
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS
on the master server if
the --show-slave-auth-info
option is given.
Display slave usernames and passwords in the output of
SHOW SLAVE HOSTS
on the master server for
slaves started with the --report-user
and
--report-password
options.
Tells the slave server not to start the slave threads when the
server starts. To start the threads later, use a
START SLAVE
statement.
--slave_compressed_protocol={0|1}
If this option is set to 1, use compression for the slave/master protocol if both the slave and the master support it. Default is 0 (no compression).
The name of the directory where the slave creates temporary
files. This option is by default equal to the value of the
tmpdir
system variable. When the slave SQL
thread replicates a LOAD DATA INFILE
statement, it extracts the file to be loaded from the relay
log into temporary files, and then loads these into the table.
If the file loaded on the master is huge, the temporary files
on the slave are huge, too. Therefore, it might be advisable
to use this option to tell the slave to put temporary files in
a directory located in some filesystem that has a lot of
available space. In that case, the relay logs are huge as
well, so you might also want to use the
--relay-log
option to place the relay logs in
that filesystem.
The directory specified by this option should be located in a
disk-based filesystem (not a memory-based filesystem) because
the temporary files used to replicate LOAD DATA
INFILE
must survive machine restarts. The directory
also should not be one that is cleared by the operating system
during the system startup process.
The number of seconds to wait for more data from the master
before the slave considers the connection broken, aborts the
read, and tries to reconnect. The first retry occurs
immediately after the timeout. The interval between retries is
controlled by the --master-connect-retry
option and the numger of reconnection attempts is limited by
the --master-retry-count
option. The default
is 3600 seconds (one hour).
--slave-skip-errors=[
err_code1
,err_code2
,...|all]
Normally, replication stops when an error occurs on the slave. This gives you the opportunity to resolve the inconsistency in the data manually. This option tells the slave SQL thread to continue replication when a statement returns any of the errors listed in the option value.
Do not use this option unless you fully understand why you are getting errors. If there are no bugs in your replication setup and client programs, and no bugs in MySQL itself, an error that stops replication should never occur. Indiscriminate use of this option results in slaves becoming hopelessly out of synchrony with the master, with you having no idea why this has occurred.
For error codes, you should use the numbers provided by the
error message in your slave error log and in the output of
SHOW SLAVE STATUS
.
Appendix聽A, Errors, Error Codes, and Common Problems, lists server error codes.
You can also (but should not) use the very non-recommended
value of all
to cause the slave to ignore
all error messages and keeps going regardless of what happens.
Needless to say, if you use all
, there are
no guarantees regarding the integrity of your data. Please do
not complain (or file bug reports) in this case if the slave's
data is not anywhere close to what it is on the master.
You have been warned.
Examples:
--slave-skip-errors=1062,1053 --slave-skip-errors=all
If a master server does not write a statement to its binary log, the statement is not replicated. If the server does log the statement, the statement is sent to all slaves and each slave determines whether to execute it or ignore it.
On the master side, decisions about which statements to log are
based on the --binlog-do-db
and
--binlog-ignore-db
options that control binary
logging. For a description of the rules that servers use in
evaluating these options, see Section聽5.11.4, 鈥淭he Binary Log鈥.
On the slave side, decisions about whether to execute or ignore
statements received from the master are made according to the
--replicate-*
options that the slave was started
with. (See Section聽6.8, 鈥淩eplication Startup Options鈥.) The slave
evaluates these options using the following procedure, which first
checks the database-level options and then the table-level
options.
In the simplest case, when there are no
--replicate-*
options, the procedure yields the
result that the slave executes all statements that it receives
from the master. Otherwise, the result depends on the particular
options given. In general, to make it easier to determine what
effect an option set will have, it is recommended that you avoid
mixing 鈥do鈥 and 鈥ignore鈥 options, or
wildcard and non-wildcard options.
Stage 1. Check the database options.
At this stage, the slave checks whether there are any
--replicate-do-db
or
--replicate-ignore-db
options that specify
database-specific conditions:
No: Permit the statement and proceed to the table-checking stage.
Yes: Test the options using the same
rules as for the --binlog-do-db
and
--binlog-ignore-db
options to determine
whether to permit or ignore the statement. What is the result
of the test?
Permit: Do not execute the statement immediately. Defer the decision and proceed to the table-checking stage.
Ignore: Ignore the statement and exit.
This stage can permit a statement for further option-checking, or cause it to be ignored. However, statements that are permitted at this stage are not actually executed yet. Instead, they pass to the following stage that checks the table options.
Stage 2. Check the table options.
If the slave reaches this point, it executes all statements if
there are no table options. If there are 鈥do鈥 table
options, the statement must match one of them if it is to be
executed; otherwise, it is ignored. If there are any
鈥ignore鈥 options, all statements are executed except
those that match any ignore
option. The
following steps describe how this evaluation occurs in more
detail.
Are there any --replicate-*-table
options?
No: There are no table restrictions, so all statements match. Execute the statement and exit.
Yes: There are table restrictions.
Evaluate the tables to be updated against them. There
might be multiple tables to update, so loop through the
following steps for each table looking for a matching
option (first the non-wild options, and then the wild
options). Only tables that are to be updated are compared
to the options. For example, if the statement is
INSERT INTO sales SELECT * FROM prices
,
only sales
is compared to the options).
If several tables are to be updated (multiple-table
statement), the first table that matches 鈥do鈥
or 鈥ignore鈥 wins. That is, the server checks
the first table against the options. If no decision could
be made, it checks the second table against the options,
and so on.
Are there any --replicate-do-table
options?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Does the table match any of them?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Execute the statement and exit.
Are there any --replicate-ignore-table
options?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Does the table match any of them?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Ignore the statement and exit.
Are there any --replicate-wild-do-table
options?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Does the table match any of them?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Execute the statement and exit.
Are there any --replicate-wild-ignore-table
options?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Does the table match any of them?
No: Proceed to the next step.
Yes: Ignore the statement and exit.
No --replicate-*-table
option was matched. Is
there another table to test against these options?
No: We have now tested all tables to
be updated and could not match any option. Are there
--replicate-do-table
or
--replicate-wild-do-table
options?
No: There were no 鈥do鈥 table options, so no explicit 鈥do鈥 match is required. Execute the statement and exit.
Yes: There were 鈥do鈥 table options, so the statement is executed only with an explicit match to one of them. Ignore the statement and exit.
Yes: Loop.
Examples:
No --replicate-*
options at all
The slave executes all statements that it receives from the master.
--replicate-*-db
options, but no table
options
The slave permits or ignores statements using the database options. Then it executes all statements permitted by those options because there are no table restrictions.
--replicate-*-table
options, but no database
options
All statements are permitted at the database-checking stage because there are no database conditions. The slave executes or ignores statements based on the table options.
A mix of database and table options
The slave permits or ignores statements using the database options. Then it evaluates all statements permitted by those options according to the table options. In some cases, this process can yield what might seem a counterintuitive result. Consider the following set of options:
[mysqld] replicate-do-db = db1 replicate-do-table = db2.mytbl2
Suppose that db1
is the default database
and the slave receives this statement:
INSERT INTO mytbl1 VALUES(1,2,3);
The database is db1
, which matches the
--replicate-do-db
option at the
database-checking stage. The algorithm then proceeds to the
table-checking stage. If there were no table options, the
statement would be executed. However, because the options
include a 鈥do鈥 table option, the statement must
match if it is to be executed. The statement does not match,
so it is ignored. (The same would happen for any table in
db1
.)
Q: How do I configure a slave if the master is running and I do not want to stop it?
A: There are several
possibilities. If you have taken a snapshot backup of the master
at some point and recorded the binary log filename and offset
(from the output of SHOW MASTER STATUS
)
corresponding to the snapshot, use the following procedure:
Make sure that the slave is assigned a unique server ID.
Execute the following statement on the slave, filling in appropriate values for each option:
mysql>CHANGE MASTER TO
->MASTER_HOST='
->master_host_name
',MASTER_USER='
->master_user_name
',MASTER_PASSWORD='
->master_pass
',MASTER_LOG_FILE='
->recorded_log_file_name
',MASTER_LOG_POS=
recorded_log_position
;
Execute START SLAVE
on the slave.
If you do not have a backup of the master server, here is a quick procedure for creating one. All steps should be performed on the master host.
Issue this statement to acquire a global read lock:
mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
With the lock still in place, execute this command (or a variation of it):
shell> tar zcf /tmp/backup.tar.gz /var/lib/mysql
Issue this statement and record the output, which you will need later:
mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;
Release the lock:
mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;
An alternative to using the preceding procedure to make a binary copy is to make an SQL dump of the master. To do this, you can use mysqldump --master-data on your master and later load the SQL dump into your slave. However, this is slower than making a binary copy.
Regardless of which of the two methods you use, afterward follow the instructions for the case when you have a snapshot and have recorded the log filename and offset. You can use the same snapshot to set up several slaves. Once you have the snapshot of the master, you can wait to set up a slave as long as the binary logs of the master are left intact. The two practical limitations on the length of time you can wait are the amount of disk space available to retain binary logs on the master and the length of time it takes the slave to catch up.
Q: Does the slave need to be connected to the master all the time?
A: No, it does not. The slave can go down or stay disconnected for hours or even days, and then reconnect and catch up on updates. For example, you can set up a master/slave relationship over a dial-up link where the link is up only sporadically and for short periods of time. The implication of this is that, at any given time, the slave is not guaranteed to be in synchrony with the master unless you take some special measures.
Q: How do I know how late a slave is compared to the master? In other words, how do I know the date of the last statement replicated by the slave?
A: If the slave is 4.1.1 or
newer, read the Seconds_Behind_Master
column in
SHOW SLAVE STATUS
. For older versions, the
following applies. This is possible only if SHOW SLAVE
STATUS
on the slave shows that the SQL thread is running
(or for MySQL 3.23, that the slave thread is running), and that
the thread has executed at least one event from the master. See
Section聽6.3, 鈥淩eplication Implementation Details鈥.
When the slave SQL thread executes an event read from the master,
it modifies its own time to the event timestamp. (This is why
TIMESTAMP
is well replicated.) In the
Time
column in the output of SHOW
PROCESSLIST
, the number of seconds displayed for the
slave SQL thread is the number of seconds between the timestamp of
the last replicated event and the real time of the slave machine.
You can use this to determine the date of the last replicated
event. Note that if your slave has been disconnected from the
master for one hour, and then reconnects, you may immediately see
Time
values like 3600 for the slave SQL thread
in SHOW PROCESSLIST
. This is because the slave
is executing statements that are one hour old.
Q: How do I force the master to block updates until the slave catches up?
A: Use the following procedure:
On the master, execute these statements:
mysql>FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
mysql>SHOW MASTER STATUS;
Record the replication coordinates (the log filename and
offset) from the output of the SHOW
statement.
On the slave, issue the following statement, where the
arguments to the MASTER_POS_WAIT()
function
are the replication coordinate values obtained in the previous
step:
mysql> SELECT MASTER_POS_WAIT('log_name
', log_offset
);
The SELECT
statement blocks until the slave
reaches the specified log file and offset. At that point, the
slave is in synchrony with the master and the statement
returns.
On the master, issue the following statement to allow the master to begin processing updates again:
mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;
Q: What issues should I be aware of when setting up two-way replication?
A: MySQL replication currently does not support any locking protocol between master and slave to guarantee the atomicity of a distributed (cross-server) update. In other words, it is possible for client A to make an update to co-master 1, and in the meantime, before it propagates to co-master 2, client B could make an update to co-master 2 that makes the update of client A work differently than it did on co-master 1. Thus, when the update of client A makes it to co-master 2, it produces tables that are different from what you have on co-master 1, even after all the updates from co-master 2 have also propagated. This means that you should not chain two servers together in a two-way replication relationship unless you are sure that your updates can safely happen in any order, or unless you take care of mis-ordered updates somehow in the client code.
You should also realize that two-way replication actually does not improve performance very much (if at all) as far as updates are concerned. Each server must do the same number of updates, just as you would have a single server do. The only difference is that there is a little less lock contention, because the updates originating on another server are serialized in one slave thread. Even this benefit might be offset by network delays.
Q: How can I use replication to improve performance of my system?
A: You should set up one server
as the master and direct all writes to it. Then configure as many
slaves as you have the budget and rackspace for, and distribute
the reads among the master and the slaves. You can also start the
slaves with the --skip-innodb
,
--skip-bdb
,
--low-priority-updates
, and
--delay-key-write=ALL
options to get speed
improvements on the slave end. In this case, the slave uses
non-transactional MyISAM
tables instead of
InnoDB
and BDB
tables to get
more speed by eliminating transactional overhead.
Q: What should I do to prepare client code in my own applications to use performance-enhancing replication?
A: If the part of your code that is responsible for database access has been properly abstracted/modularized, converting it to run with a replicated setup should be very smooth and easy. Change the implementation of your database access to send all writes to the master, and to send reads to either the master or a slave. If your code does not have this level of abstraction, setting up a replicated system gives you the opportunity and motivation to it clean up. Start by creating a wrapper library or module that implements the following functions:
safe_writer_connect()
safe_reader_connect()
safe_reader_statement()
safe_writer_statement()
safe_
in each function name means that the
function takes care of handling all error conditions. You can use
different names for the functions. The important thing is to have
a unified interface for connecting for reads, connecting for
writes, doing a read, and doing a write.
Then convert your client code to use the wrapper library. This may be a painful and scary process at first, but it pays off in the long run. All applications that use the approach just described are able to take advantage of a master/slave configuration, even one involving multiple slaves. The code is much easier to maintain, and adding troubleshooting options is trivial. You need modify only one or two functions; for example, to log how long each statement took, or which statement among those issued gave you an error.
If you have written a lot of code, you may want to automate the conversion task by using the replace utility that comes with standard MySQL distributions, or just write your own conversion script. Ideally, your code uses consistent programming style conventions. If not, then you are probably better off rewriting it anyway, or at least going through and manually regularizing it to use a consistent style.
Q: When and how much can MySQL replication improve the performance of my system?
A: MySQL replication is most beneficial for a system that processes frequent reads and infrequent writes. In theory, by using a single-master/multiple-slave setup, you can scale the system by adding more slaves until you either run out of network bandwidth, or your update load grows to the point that the master cannot handle it.
To determine how many slaves you can use before the added benefits
begin to level out, and how much you can improve performance of
your site, you need to know your query patterns, and to determine
empirically by benchmarking the relationship between the
throughput for reads (reads per second, or
reads
) and for writes
(writes
) on a typical master and a typical
slave. The example here shows a rather simplified calculation of
what you can get with replication for a hypothetical system.
Let's say that system load consists of 10% writes and 90% reads,
and we have determined by benchmarking that
reads
is 1200 鈥 2 脳
writes
. In other words, the system can do 1,200
reads per second with no writes, the average write is twice as
slow as the average read, and the relationship is linear. Let us
suppose that the master and each slave have the same capacity, and
that we have one master and N
slaves.
Then we have for each server (master or slave):
reads = 1200 鈥 2 脳 writes
reads = 9 脳 writes / (
(reads are split, but writes go to all servers)
N
+ 1)
9 脳 writes / (
N
+ 1) + 2
脳 writes = 1200
writes = 1200 / (2 +
9/(
N
+1))
The last equation indicates the maximum number of writes for
N
slaves, given a maximum possible read
rate of 1,200 per minute and a ratio of nine reads per write.
This analysis yields the following conclusions:
If N
= 0 (which means we have no
replication), our system can handle about 1200/11 = 109 writes
per second.
If N
= 1, we get up to 184 writes
per second.
If N
= 8, we get up to 400 writes
per second.
If N
= 17, we get up to 480 writes
per second.
Eventually, as N
approaches
infinity (and our budget negative infinity), we can get very
close to 600 writes per second, increasing system throughput
about 5.5 times. However, with only eight servers, we increase
it nearly four times.
Note that these computations assume infinite network bandwidth and
neglect several other factors that could be significant on your
system. In many cases, you may not be able to perform a
computation similar to the one just shown that accurately predicts
what will happen on your system if you add
N
replication slaves. However,
answering the following questions should help you decide whether
and by how much replication will improve the performance of your
system:
What is the read/write ratio on your system?
How much more write load can one server handle if you reduce the reads?
For how many slaves do you have bandwidth available on your network?
Q: How can I use replication to provide redundancy or high availability?
A: With the currently available features, you would have to set up a master and a slave (or several slaves), and to write a script that monitors the master to check whether it is up. Then instruct your applications and the slaves to change master in case of failure. Some suggestions:
To tell a slave to change its master, use the CHANGE
MASTER TO
statement.
A good way to keep your applications informed as to the
location of the master is by having a dynamic DNS entry for
the master. With bind
you can use
nsupdate
to dynamically update your DNS.
Run your slaves with the --log-bin
option and
without --log-slave-updates
. In this way, the
slave is ready to become a master as soon as you issue
STOP SLAVE
; RESET
MASTER
, and CHANGE MASTER TO
statement on the other slaves. For example, assume that you
have the following setup:
WC \ v WC----> M / | \ / | \ v v v S1 S2 S3
In this diagram, M
means the master,
S
the slaves, WC
the
clients issuing database writes and reads; clients that issue
only database reads are not represented, because they need not
switch. S1
, S2
, and
S3
are slaves running with
--log-bin
and without
--log-slave-updates
. Because updates received
by a slave from the master are not logged in the binary log
unless --log-slave-updates
is specified, the
binary log on each slave is empty initially. If for some
reason M
becomes unavailable, you can pick
one of the slaves to become the new master. For example, if
you pick S1
, all WC
should be redirected to S1
, which will log
updates to its binary log. S2
and
S3
should then replicate from
S1
.
The reason for running the slave without
--log-slave-updates
is to prevent slaves from
receiving updates twice in case you cause one of the slaves to
become the new master. Suppose that S1
has
--log-slave-updates
enabled. Then it will
write updates that it receives from M
to
its own binary log. When S2
changes from
M
to S1
as its master,
it may receive updates from S1
that it has
already received from M
Make sure that all slaves have processed any statements in
their relay log. On each slave, issue STOP SLAVE
IO_THREAD
, then check the output of SHOW
PROCESSLIST
until you see Has read all
relay log
. When this is true for all slaves, they
can be reconfigured to the new setup. On the slave
S1
being promoted to become the master,
issue STOP SLAVE
and RESET
MASTER
.
On the other slaves S2
and
S3
, use STOP SLAVE
and
CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='S1'
(where
'S1'
represents the real hostname of
S1
). To CHANGE MASTER
,
add all information about how to connect to
S1
from S2
or
S3
(user
,
password
,
port
). In CHANGE
MASTER
, there is no need to specify the name of
S1
's binary log or binary log position to
read from: We know it is the first binary log and position 4,
which are the defaults for CHANGE MASTER
.
Finally, use START SLAVE
on
S2
and S3
.
Then instruct all WC
to direct their
statements to S1
. From that point on, all
updates statements sent by WC
to
S1
are written to the binary log of
S1
, which then contains every update
statement sent to S1
since
M
died.
The result is this configuration:
WC / | WC | M(unavailable) \ | \ | v v S1<--S2 S3 ^ | +-------+
When M
is up again, you must issue on it
the same CHANGE MASTER
as that issued on
S2
and S3
, so that
M
becomes a slave of S1
and picks up all the WC
writes that it
missed while it was down. To make M
a
master again (because it is the most powerful machine, for
example), use the preceding procedure as if
S1
was unavailable and M
was to be the new master. During this procedure, do not forget
to run RESET MASTER
on M
before making S1
, S2
,
and S3
slaves of M
.
Otherwise, they may pick up old WC
writes
from before the point at which M
became
unavailable.
Note that there is no synchronization between the different slaves to a master. Some slaves might be ahead of others. This means that the concept outlined in the previous example might not work. In practice, however, the relay logs of different slaves will most likely not be far behind the master, so it would work, anyway (but there is no guarantee).
Q: How do I prevent GRANT and REVOKE statements from replicating to slave machines?
A: Start the server with the
--replicate-wild-ignore-table=mysql.%
option.
Q: Does replication work on mixed operating systems (for example, the master runs on Linux while slaves run on Mac OS X and Windows)?
A: Yes.
Q: Does replication work on mixed hardware architectures (for example, the master runs on a 64-bit machine while slaves run on 32-bit machines)?
A: Yes.
If you have followed the instructions, and your replication setup is not working, the first thing to do is check the error log for messages. Many users have lost time by not doing this soon enough after encountering problems.
If you cannot tell from the error log what the problem was, try the following techniques:
Verify that the master has binary logging enabled by issuing a
SHOW MASTER STATUS
statement. If logging is
enabled, Position
is non-zero. If binary
logging is not enabled, verify that you are running the master
with the --log-bin
and
--server-id
options.
Verify that the slave is running. Use SHOW SLAVE
STATUS
to check whether the
Slave_IO_Running
and
Slave_SQL_Running
values are both
Yes
. If not, verify the options that were
used when starting the slave server. For example,
--skip-slave-start
prevents the slave threads
from starting until you issue a START SLAVE
statement.
If the slave is running, check whether it established a
connection to the master. Use SHOW
PROCESSLIST
, find the I/O and SQL threads and check
their State
column to see what they
display. See
Section聽6.3, 鈥淩eplication Implementation Details鈥. If the
I/O thread state says Connecting to master
,
verify the privileges for the replication user on the master,
the master hostname, your DNS setup, whether the master is
actually running, and whether it is reachable from the slave.
If the slave was running previously but has stopped, the reason usually is that some statement that succeeded on the master failed on the slave. This should never happen if you have taken a proper snapshot of the master, and never modified the data on the slave outside of the slave thread. If the slave stops unexpectedly, it is a bug or you have encountered one of the known replication limitations described in Section聽6.7, 鈥淩eplication Features and Known Problems鈥. If it is a bug, see Section聽6.12, 鈥淗ow to Report Replication Bugs or Problems鈥, for instructions on how to report it.
MySQL Enterprise For immediate notification whenever a slave stops, subscribe to the MySQL Network Monitoring and Advisory Service. For more information see, http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.
If a statement that succeeded on the master refuses to run on the slave, try the following procedure if it is not feasible to do a full database resynchronization by deleting the slave's databases and copying a new snapshot from the master:
Determine whether the affected table on the slave is
different from the master table. Try to understand how
this happened. Then make the slave's table identical to
the master's and run START SLAVE
.
If the preceding step does not work or does not apply, try to understand whether it would be safe to make the update manually (if needed) and then ignore the next statement from the master.
If you decide that you can skip the next statement from the master, issue the following statements:
mysql>SET GLOBAL SQL_SLAVE_SKIP_COUNTER =
mysql>N
;START SLAVE;
The value of N
should be 1 if
the next statement from the master does not use
AUTO_INCREMENT
or
LAST_INSERT_ID()
. Otherwise, the value
should be 2. The reason for using a value of 2 for
statements that use AUTO_INCREMENT
or
LAST_INSERT_ID()
is that they take two
events in the binary log of the master.
If you are sure that the slave started out perfectly synchronized with the master, and that no one has updated the tables involved outside of the slave thread, then presumably the discrepancy is the result of a bug. If you are running the most recent version of MySQL, please report the problem. If you are running an older version, try upgrading to the latest production release to determine whether the problem persists.
When you have determined that there is no user error involved, and replication still either does not work at all or is unstable, it is time to send us a bug report. We need to obtain as much information as possible from you to be able to track down the bug. Please spend some time and effort in preparing a good bug report.
If you have a repeatable test case that demonstrates the bug, please enter it into our bugs database using the instructions given in Section聽1.8, 鈥淗ow to Report Bugs or Problems鈥. If you have a 鈥phantom鈥 problem (one that you cannot duplicate at will), use the following procedure:
Verify that no user error is involved. For example, if you update the slave outside of the slave thread, the data goes out of synchrony, and you can have unique key violations on updates. In this case, the slave thread stops and waits for you to clean up the tables manually to bring them into synchrony. This is not a replication problem. It is a problem of outside interference causing replication to fail.
Run the slave with the --log-slave-updates
and --log-bin
options. These options cause
the slave to log the updates that it receives from the master
into its own binary logs.
Save all evidence before resetting the replication state. If we have no information or only sketchy information, it becomes difficult or impossible for us to track down the problem. The evidence you should collect is:
All binary logs from the master
All binary logs from the slave
The output of SHOW MASTER STATUS
from
the master at the time you discovered the problem
The output of SHOW SLAVE STATUS
from
the slave at the time you discovered the problem
Error logs from the master and the slave
Use mysqlbinlog to examine the binary logs.
The following should be helpful to find the problem statement.
log_pos
and
log_file
are the
Master_Log_File
and
Read_Master_Log_Pos
values from
SHOW SLAVE STATUS
.
shell> mysqlbinlog -j log_pos
log_file
| head
After you have collected the evidence for the problem, try to isolate it as a separate test case first. Then enter the problem with as much information as possible into our bugs database using the instructions at Section聽1.8, 鈥淗ow to Report Bugs or Problems鈥.