20 mysqladmin Commands for MYSQL/MariaDB Database Administration

mysqladmin is a command-line database administration utility that comes with MySQL/MariaDB server, which is used by Database Administrators to perform some basic MySQL tasks such as setting the root password, changing the root password, monitoring mysql processes, reloading privileges, creating/dropping databases, checking server status, show usage statistic, kill running queries, etc.

The command to use mysqladmin and the general syntax is:

# mysqladmin [options] command [command-arg] [command [command-arg]] ...

If you don’t have MySQL/MariaDB server installed or you are using an older version of the MySQL server, then we recommend you to install or update the MySQL version using the following articles:

• How to Install MySQL on RHEL-based Distributions
• How to Install MariaDB in RHEL and Debian Systems

In this article, we’ve compiled some very useful ‘mysqladmin‘ commands that are used by system/database administrators in their day-to-day work. You must have MySQL/MariaDB server installed on your system to perform these tasks.

1. How to Set MySQL Root Password

If you have a fresh installation of MySQL/MariaDB server, then it doesn’t require any password to connect it as the root user. To set the MySQL password for the root user, use the following command.

# mysqladmin -u root password YOURNEWPASSWORD

Warning: Setting a new MYSQL password using mysqladmin should be considered vulnerable. On some systems, your password becomes visible to system status programs such as the ps command that may be executed by other users to know the status of active processes on a system.

2. How to Change MySQL Root Password

If you would like to change or update the MySQL root password, then you need to type the following command. For example, say your old password is 123456 and you want to change it with a new password say xyz123.

# mysqladmin -u root -p123456 password 'xyz123'

3. How to Check Status of MySQL Server

To find out whether the MySQL server is up and running, use the following command.

# mysqladmin -u root -p ping

Enter password:
mysqld is alive

4. How to Check Which MySQL Version I am Running

The following command shows the MySQL version along with the current running status.

# mysqladmin -u root -p version

Enter password: 
mysqladmin  Ver 9.1 Distrib 10.3.32-MariaDB, for Linux on x86_64
Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab, and others.

Server version		10.3.32-MariaDB
Protocol version	10
Connection		Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket		/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:			18 min 6 sec

Threads: 6  Questions: 20  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 18  Flush tables: 1  
Open tables: 11  Queries per second avg: 0.018

5. How to Find Out Current Status of MySQL Server

To find out the current status of the MySQL server, use the following command. The mysqladmin command shows the status of uptime with running threads and queries.

# mysqladmin -u root -p status

Enter password: 
Uptime: 1185  Threads: 6  Questions: 21  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 18  Flush tables: 1
Open tables: 11  Queries per second avg: 0.017

6. How to Check MySQL Status Variables and Their Values

To check all the running status of MySQL server variables and values, type the following command. The output would be similar to the one below.

# mysqladmin -u root -p extended-status

Enter password: 
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Variable_name                          | Value               |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Aborted_clients                        | 0                   |
| Aborted_connects                       | 2                   |
| Access_denied_errors                   | 2                   |
| Acl_column_grants                      | 0                   |
| Acl_database_grants                    | 0                   |
| Acl_function_grants                    | 0                   |
| Acl_procedure_grants                   | 0                   |
| Acl_package_spec_grants                | 0                   |
| Acl_package_body_grants                | 0                   |
| Acl_proxy_users                        | 2                   |
| Acl_role_grants                        | 0                   |
| Acl_roles                              | 0                   |
| Acl_table_grants                       | 0                   |
| Acl_users                              | 4                   |
| Aria_pagecache_blocks_not_flushed      | 0                   |
| Aria_pagecache_blocks_unused           | 15706               |
| Aria_pagecache_blocks_used             | 0                   |
| Aria_pagecache_read_requests           | 0                   |
| Aria_pagecache_reads                   | 0                   |
| Aria_pagecache_write_requests          | 0                   |

...

7. How to see all MySQL server Variables and Values?

To see all the running variables and values of the MySQL server, use the command as follows.

# mysqladmin  -u root -p variables

Enter password:
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| Variable_name                              | Value                       |
+--------------------------------------------+-----------------------------+
| auto_increment_increment                   | 1                           |
| auto_increment_offset                      | 1                           |
| autocommit                                 | ON                          |
| automatic_sp_privileges                    | ON                          |
| back_log                                   | 50                          |
| basedir                                    | /usr                        |
| big_tables                                 | OFF                         |
| binlog_cache_size                          | 32768                       |
| binlog_direct_non_transactional_updates    | OFF                         |
| binlog_format                              | STATEMENT                   |
| binlog_stmt_cache_size                     | 32768                       |
| bulk_insert_buffer_size                    | 8388608                     |
| character_set_client                       | latin1                      |
| character_set_connection                   | latin1                      |
| character_set_database                     | latin1                      |
| character_set_filesystem                   | binary                      |
| character_set_results                      | latin1                      |
| character_set_server                       | latin1                      |
| character_set_system                       | utf8                        |
| character_sets_dir                         | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/  |
| collation_connection                       | latin1_swedish_ci           |
+---------------------------------------------------+----------------------+
...

8. How to Check Active Threads of MySQL Server

The following command will display all the running processes of MySQL database queries.

# mysqladmin -u root -p processlist

Enter password: 
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+
| Id | User        | Host      | db | Command | Time | State                    | Info             | Progress |
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+
| 2  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge coordinator |                  | 0.000    |
| 1  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 4  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 3  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 5  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB shutdown handler  |                  | 0.000    |
| 20 | root        | localhost |    | Query   | 0    | Init                     | show processlist | 0.000    |
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+

9. How to Create a Database in MySQL Server

To create a new database in the MySQL server, use the command shown below.

# mysqladmin -u root -p create tecmint
Enter password: 

# mysql -u root -p

Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 22
Server version: 10.3.32-MariaDB MariaDB Server

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab, and others.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

MariaDB [(none)]> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| performance_schema |
| tecmint |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.001 sec)

10. How to Drop a Database in MySQL Server

To drop a Database in the MySQL server, use the following command. You will be asked to confirm press ‘y‘.

# mysqladmin -u root -p drop tecmint

Enter password: 
Dropping the database is potentially a very bad thing to do.
Any data stored in the database will be destroyed.

Do you really want to drop the 'tecmint' database [y/N] y
Database "tecmint" dropped

11. How to Reload/Refresh MySQL Privileges?

The reload command tells the server to reload the grant tables and the refresh command flushes all tables and reopens the log files.

# mysqladmin -u root -p reload
# mysqladmin -u root -p refresh

12. How to Shutdown MySQL Server Safely

To shutdown the MySQL server safely, type the following command.

mysqladmin -u root -p shutdown

Enter password:

You can also use the following commands to start/stop the MySQL server.

# systemctl stop mysqld
# systemctl start mysqld
Or
# systemctl stop mariadb
# systemctl start mariadb

13. Some useful MySQL Flush Commands

Following are some useful flush commands with their description.

• flush-hosts: Flush all host information from the host cache.
• flush-tables: Flush all tables.
• flush-threads: Flush all threads cache.
• flush-logs: Flush all information logs.
• flush-privileges: Reload the grant tables (same as reload).
• flush-status: Clear status variables.

Let’s check out these commands.

# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-hosts
# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-tables
# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-threads
# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-logs
# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-privileges
# mysqladmin -u root -p flush-status

14. How to kill Sleeping MySQL Client Process?

Use the following command to identify the sleeping MySQL client process.

# mysqladmin -u root -p processlist

Enter password:
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 5  | root | localhost |    | Sleep   | 14   |       |			 |
| 8  | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

Now, run the following command with kill and process ID as shown below.

# mysqladmin -u root -p kill 5

Enter password:
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| Id | User | Host      | db | Command | Time | State | Info             |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+
| 12 | root | localhost |    | Query   | 0    |       | show processlist |
+----+------+-----------+----+---------+------+-------+------------------+

If you like to kill multiple processes, then pass the process ids with commas separated as shown below.

# mysqladmin -u root -p kill 5,10

15. How to Run Multiple mysqladmin Commands Together

If you would like to execute multiple ‘mysqladmin‘ commands together, then the command would be like this.

# mysqladmin  -u root -p processlist status version

Enter password: 
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+
| Id | User        | Host      | db | Command | Time | State                    | Info             | Progress |
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+
| 1  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 2  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge coordinator |                  | 0.000    |
| 4  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 3  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB purge worker      |                  | 0.000    |
| 5  | system user |           |    | Daemon  |      | InnoDB shutdown handler  |                  | 0.000    |
| 9  | root        | localhost |    | Query   | 0    | Init                     | show processlist | 0.000    |
+----+-------------+-----------+----+---------+------+--------------------------+------------------+----------+
Uptime: 173  Threads: 6  Questions: 4  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 18  Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 11  Queries per second avg: 0.023
mysqladmin  Ver 9.1 Distrib 10.3.32-MariaDB, for Linux on x86_64
Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab, and others.

Server version		10.3.32-MariaDB
Protocol version	10
Connection		Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket		/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Uptime:			2 min 53 sec

Threads: 6  Questions: 4  Slow queries: 0  Opens: 18  Flush tables: 1  Open tables: 11  Queries per second avg: 0.023

16. How to Connect Remote Mysql Server

To connect to the remote MySQL server, use the -h (host)  with the IP Address of the remote machine.

# mysqladmin -h 172.16.25.126 -u root -p

17. How to Execute Command on Remote MySQL Server

Let’s say you would like to see the status of the remote MySQL server, then the command would be.

# mysqladmin -h 172.16.25.126 -u root -p status

18. How to Start/Stop MySQL Replication on a Slave Server

To start/stop MySQL replication on the slave server, use the following commands.

# mysqladmin  -u root -p start-slave
# mysqladmin  -u root -p stop-slave

19. How to Store MySQL Server Debug Information to Logs

It tells the server to write debug information about locks in use, used memory, and query usage to the MySQL log file including information about the event scheduler.

# mysqladmin  -u root -p debug

Enter password:

20. How to View mysqladmin Options and Usage

To find out more options and usage of the myslqadmin command use the help command as shown below. It will display a list of available options.

# mysqladmin --help

We have tried our best to include almost all of the ‘mysqladmin‘ commands with their examples in this article, If still, we’ve missed anything, please do let us know via comments, and don’t forget to share with your friends.