How to do MySQL User Accounting

Question

I can't seem to find any information on this anywhere. I found a question here called Monitor MySQL activity per database? but that's not quite the answer either.

I'd like to be able to log the following to a system log somewhere, preferably via syslog:

User (not master/slave) login
User logout
User connect time
User IP

Something similar to last and lastb for MySQL. Can this be done? Is anything already written and in the Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux repositories? Can MaatKit do this?

Thanks!

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 27 '11 at 19:20

Your only recourse would be to activate the slow log and use it as a MyISAM table. By default, the slow log would normally be a text file. However, a general_log table was provided in newer release of MySQL as a CSV table.

mysql> use mysql
Database changed
mysql> show create table slow_log\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
       Table: slow_log
Create Table: CREATE TABLE `slow_log` (
  `start_time` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  `user_host` mediumtext NOT NULL,
  `query_time` time NOT NULL,
  `lock_time` time NOT NULL,
  `rows_sent` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `rows_examined` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `db` varchar(512) NOT NULL,
  `last_insert_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `insert_id` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `server_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL,
  `sql_text` mediumtext NOT NULL,
  KEY `start_time` (`start_time`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COMMENT='Slow log'
1 row in set (0.03 sec)

mysql>

Make sure you have this in my.cnf and then restart mysql if you had to add this:

[mysqld]
log-output=TABLE
log-slow-queries
long-query-time=0.00001

Next, convert the table to MyISAM and index it on the needed columns:

SET @old_log_state = @@global.slow_query_log;
SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = 'OFF';
ALTER TABLE mysql.slow_log ENGINE = MyISAM;
ALTER TABLE mysql.slow_log ADD INDEX starttime_index (start_time);
ALTER TABLE mysql.slow_log ADD INDEX db_starttime_index (db,start_time);
SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = @old_log_state;
SHOW CREATE TABLE mysql.slow_log\G

You can query the table and retrieve the user and host from mysql.slow_log column user_host.

You can crontab some tasks to copy the data from mysql.slow_log where you need it, may a separate database.

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS mystatus;

Perhaps, you can run queries like this:

SET @old_log_state = @@global.slow_query_log;
SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = 'OFF';
ALTER TABLE mysql.slow_log RENAME mystats.slow_log;
CREATE TABLE mysql.slow_log LIKE mystats.slow_log;
SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = @old_log_state;

This will move the slow log elsewhere and start with an empty one.

This may not be a full answer, but I hope this is useful to you as to some direction to take.

How to do MySQL User Accounting

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