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14.4 How to Set Up Replication »
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14.3.3. The Slave Status Files

A slave replication server creates two small status files. By default, these files are named master.info and relay-log.info and created in the data directory. Their names and locations can be changed by using the --master-info-file and --relay-log-info-file options (see Section 14.8, “Replication and Binary Logging Options and Variables”).

The two status files contain information like that shown in the output of the SHOW SLAVE STATUS statement, which is discussed in Section 12.5.2, “SQL Statements for Controlling Slave Servers”. 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 master.info file should be protected because it contains the password for connecting to the master. See Section 5.4.2.1, “Administrator Guidelines for Password Security”.

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 STATUS statement might 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 (that is, 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. This requires that the binary logs still exist on the master server.

If your slave is 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 location of this directory is the value of the --slave-load-tmpdir option. If the server was not started with that option, the directory location is the value of the tmpdir system variable.