Overview of Executables | MySQL Tutorial

The MySQL executables are in the bin and scripts directories. Let's begin by looking in the bin directory.

You will find the mysqld executable and any variations for your operating system in here. This is the MySQL server program, the one you set up to run automatically when you started your system in Chapter 1.

You will also find mysql, the MySQL monitor, here. This is the basic command-line client.

As well as these two main programs, you will find several others. We will cover the usage of many of these through the course of this book. Some particularly important programs are listed here:

mysqladmin: Used to perform many administrative functions.
myisamchk: Used to check and repair damaged MyISAM tables.
mysqldump: Used to back up your databases.
mysqlbinlog: Used to read the contents of the binary log, essential for disaster recovery.
mysqlshow: Used to get information about databases and tables.

We will use mysqld and mysql throughout the course of this book, and we'll revisit these other programs in Part V, "Administering MySQL."

Now, look in the scripts directory. The programs in this directory are interpreted Perl scripts, rather than compiled programs as in the bin directory. Again, we will cover the usage of some of these as you work your way through this book. The main one we will use in this book is mysqlhotcopy, which is used for backing up databases. (This is covered in Chapter 14, "Backup and Disaster Recovery.")