Mysql General Query Log

Before Mysql version 5.1.6, you can only log to files what mysqld was doing. 5.1.6 comes with an option where it let's you keep this log in a table called mysql.general_log. Even further, version 5.1.12 came with a new ability to let you disable general query logging on the fly.

You can enable/disable mysql general query logging by setting global variable "general_log".For example following command, starts general logging on the fly.

SET GLOBAL general_log = 'ON';

You have to options, either you can log the queries on in a file where it was the only option before version 5.1.6 , or you can log in the table I mentioned above called mysql.general_log by using global variable "log_output".
The following statement tells mysql to log queries in table mysql.general_log instead of a file.

set global log_output='table';

In any time, you can truncate the table to delete it's contents.




After logging the queries, you can see them by simply using a select statement.

select * from mysql.general_log;

to make it more readable you can use \G at the end of the query.
select * from mysql.general_log\G;