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The slow query log consists of all SQL statements that took more
than long_query_time seconds to
execute. The time to acquire the initial table locks is not
counted as execution time. mysqld writes a
statement to the slow query log after it has been executed and
after all locks have been released, so log order might be
different from execution order. The minimum and default values of
long_query_time are 1 and 10,
respectively.
To enable the slow query log, start mysqld with
the
--log-slow-queries[=
option.
file_name]
If no file_name value is given for
--log-slow-queries, the default
name is
host_name-slow.log
The slow query log can be used to find queries that take a long time to execute and are therefore candidates for optimization. However, examining a long slow query log can become a difficult task. To make this easier, you can process a slow query log file using the mysqldumpslow command to summarize the queries that appear in the log. See Section 4.6.7, “mysqldumpslow — Summarize Slow Query Log Files”.
Before MySQL 4.1, if you also use
--log-long-format when logging slow
queries, queries that are not using indexes are logged as well.
Starting with MySQL 4.1, logging of queries not using indexes is
enabled using the
--log-queries-not-using-indexes
option instead. The
--log-long-format is deprecated as
of MySQL 4.1, when
--log-short-format was introduced,
which causes less information to be logged. (The long log format
is the default setting since version 4.1.). See
Section 5.1.2, “Server Command Options”.
MySQL Enterprise. Excessive table scans are indicative of missing or poorly optimized indexes. Using an advisor specifically designed for the task, the MySQL Enterprise Monitor can identify such problems and offer advice on resolution. For more information, see http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.
In MySQL 4.0, slow administrative statements such as
OPTIMIZE TABLE,
ANALYZE TABLE, and
ALTER TABLE were written to the
slow query log. This logging was disabled in MySQL 4.1 until
4.1.13, when the
--log-slow-admin-statements server
option was added to specify logging of slow administrative
statements.
Queries handled by the query cache are not added to the slow query log, nor are queries that would not benefit from the presence of an index because the table has zero rows or one row.
Replication slaves do not write replicated queries to the slow query log, even if the same queries were written to the slow query log on the master. This is a known issue which we intend to fix in a future version of MySQL. (Bug#23300)
The slow query log should be protected because logged statements might contain passwords. See Section 5.4.2.1, “Administrator Guidelines for Password Security”.
User Comments
Please note that the mysql slow query log will not show the SQL of your slow queries if your application uses prepared statement.
You may want to turn on General Query Log instead.
When I turned on the slow_query.log, and told it to also log queries that do not use indexes my log started to fill up with SHOW COLLATION; and SHOW VARIABLES; statement.
It can cause your log file to grow VERY quickly.
Here are instructions on getting mysqldumpslow to work in your environment if you have my.cnf in a non-standard (eg, non /etc) locale. Please note this is for Unix only.
1. Make sure it can find perl in /usr/local/bin/perl
2. Make sure you've got the slow log running first
3. Copy the slow log to datadir and name it specifically: servername-slow.log (eg, servername-slow.log). This assumes your actual slowlog is located somewhere else. If it is located by default in datadir then you still must make a copy of it, named hostname-slow.log in datadir directory.
4. Make a copy of mysqldumpslow in the $MYSQL_HOME/bin directory, and name it: mysqldumpslow_new and be sure it is chmod 750
5. Edit the mysqldumpslow_new as described in the next item.
6. Assuming you don't place your server's my.cnf in /etc, you must tell my_print_defaults where datadir and basedir are because they can't be set directly in mysqldumpslow nor can they be passed as a parameter on the command line to mysqldumpslow.
This is done by altering the command line option to my_print_defaults, the results of which are fed into the mysqldumpslow perl script to establish datadir, basedir, and a few other variables. The following line in
mysqldumpslow_new should be changed.
Change from:
my $defaults = `my_print_defaults mysqld`;
to:
my $defaults = `my_print_defaults -c /location/where/config_file_lives/my.cnf mysqld`;
Make sure the my.cnf pointed to in the -c option has datadir and basedir set under [mysqld] section.
7. To run the program now, simply type:
./mysqldumpslow_new -s c -t 3
8. You have now displayed output from the slow query log telling you the top 3 slow queries on the system.
Andrea Gangini posted that slow queries made via prepared statements do not post to the slow query log. This is not exactly true.
In the case of MySQL 5.0.22 when accessed through JDBC (Java 1.5.0), slow queries constructed via PreparedStatement always appear in the slow query log. Slow queries constructed normally (via Statement), sometimes appear. I suspect that PreparedStatements bypass the query cache and so are always reported in the log whereas regular Statements are checked against the query cache. If the results are taken from the query cache and not by accessing the tables, the query does not appear in slow query log. Testing regular Statements with the SQL_CACHE and SQL_NO_CACHE hints seems to confirm this. (Remember MySQL does not expend much effort trying to recognise queries it's already seen - if the query strings aren't exactly the same, don't expect to get help from the query cache.)
Chris
If you see many trivial queries being logged here, you may have log-long-format enabled.
This logs all queries not using indexes in the slow query logs, which includes queries so trivial that using the index would be slower.
Replication queries which are slow aren't saved in the slow logs. If a Slave is behaving badly and the only thing that shows up in the slow logs are queries which are not normally a problem, then replication queries may be causing problems. Check the timetamp in the replication logs and compare them to the slow logs.
Syntax for /etc/my.cnf in Red Hat 9:
[mysqld]
set-variable=long_query_time=1
log-slow-queries=/var/log/mysql/log-slow-queries.log
You must create the file manually and change owners this way:
mkdir /var/log/mysql
touch /var/log/mysql/log-slow-queries.log
chown mysql.mysql -R /var/log/mysql
If you are loading a large database dump created using mysqldump in the normal way, be aware that if an insert statement takes longer than long_query_time, the ENTIRE huge insert statement (with all its individual rows) will be logged to the slow query file. This can significantly extend the time it takes to load the database.
An example:
[mysqld]
log-slow-queries = slow.log
long_query_time = 20
log-queries-not-using-indexes
- The first line under [mysqld] turns on slow query log and logs all slow queries to slow.log in the MySQL data directory.
- The second line indicates that any queries that took more than 20 seconds to execute need to be logged.
- The last line tells MySQL to log *any* queries that do not use indexes regardless of the setting in the second line.
If you like you can set the long_query_time very high so that only the queries that do not use indexes are logged (and no 'general' slow queries).
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