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[root@jiaoyou mysql]# pwd
[root@jiaoyou mysql]# ls -ls
338256 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 346030080 2010-04-22 08:08 ibdata1
626812 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 641222072 2010-01-26 07:17 mysql-bin.000008
316892 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql 324173772 2010-03-25 12:51 mysql-bin.000009
52724 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql  53931666 2010-04-12 12:13 mysql-bin.000010
10136 -rw-rw---- 1 mysql mysql  10359639 2010-04-22 08:32 mysql-bin.000011

| Log_name         | File_size |
| mysql-bin.000008 | 641222072 | 
| mysql-bin.000009 | 324173772 | 
| mysql-bin.000010 |  53931666 | 
| mysql-bin.000011 |  10360680 | 

These files ibdata1,mysql-bin.000008 and mysql-bin.000009 ... are taking up too much of my space,will it be ok for me to delete some of them manually?

UPDATE I'm not utilizing MySQL's master/slave,how to drop and disable all the binary files?

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3 Answers

Those are mysql bin logs. The server can get seriously irritated if you delete them with rm.

Instead, use PURGE BINARY LOGS TO 'mysql-bin.010'; as the root mysql user to let it safely delete the files.

More information can be found here in the documentation.

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What's the relation between these BINARY LOGS? –  apache Apr 22 '10 at 13:34
These are the files that are in your database /var/lib/mysql directory. –  Tom O'Connor Apr 22 '10 at 15:53
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The mysql-bin files are the binary logs, which are typically both for either a transaction history or for the purpose of replication. To disable binary logging, you can comment the log-bin* lines in the cnf. log-slave-updates should be commented too if enabled.

ibdata* files are part of InnoDB's tablespace, which is specified with the innodb_data_file_path setting. I wouldn't recommend deleting unless you have no InnoDB tables and first disable InnoDB by using skip-innodb in the cnf.

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Do I need to comment the server-id to disable it? –  apache Apr 22 '10 at 15:03
No, you do not but you could. That is used for identifying the server uniquely during replication. –  Warner Apr 22 '10 at 15:48
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To disable the logging entirely you need to comment out the log-bin value in your config file (typically /etc/my.cnf):


I think the ibdata1 file might contain the actual database though - I don't use innodb so I'm not sure - and so I would not recommend removing that one. The "PURGE BINARY LOGS TO..." command will get rid of the binary logs though.

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