4.10 Unix Signal Handling in MySQL

On Unix and Unix-like systems, a process can be the recipient of signals sent to it by root or the account that owns the process. Signals can be sent using the kill command. Some command interpreters associate certain key sequences with signals, such as Control+C to send a SIGINT signal. This section describes how the MySQL server and client programs respond to signals.

Server Response to Signals

mysqld responds to signals as follows:

  • SIGTERM causes the server to shut down. This is like executing a SHUTDOWN statement without having to connect to the server (which for shutdown requires an account that has the SHUTDOWN privilege).

  • SIGHUP causes the server to reload the grant tables and to flush tables, logs, the thread cache, and the host cache. These actions are like various forms of the FLUSH statement. The server also writes a status report to the error log that has this format:

    Status information:
    
    Current dir: /var/mysql/data/
    Running threads: 0  Stack size: 196608
    Current locks:
    
    Key caches:
    default
    Buffer_size:       8388600
    Block_size:           1024
    Division_limit:        100
    Age_limit:             300
    blocks used:             0
    not flushed:             0
    w_requests:              0
    writes:                  0
    r_requests:              0
    reads:                   0
    
    handler status:
    read_key:            0
    read_next:           0
    read_rnd             0
    read_first:          1
    write:               0
    delete               0
    update:              0
    
    Table status:
    Opened tables:          5
    Open tables:            0
    Open files:             7
    Open streams:           0
    
    Alarm status:
    Active alarms:   1
    Max used alarms: 2
    Next alarm time: 67
  • SIGINT normally is ignored by the server. Starting the server with the --gdb option installs an interrupt handler for SIGINT for debugging purposes. See Section 28.5.1.4, “Debugging mysqld under gdb”.

Client Response to Signals

MySQL client programs respond to signals as follows: