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Get MySQL Logs Into Honeycomb

Table of Contents

Our connector pulls your MySQL logs into Honeycomb for analysis, so you can finally get a quick handle on the database queries triggered by your application logic. It surfaces attributes like:

• The normalized query shape
• Time spent waiting to acquire lock
• Number of rows examined to execute the query
• Number of rows returned by MySQL
• … and more!

Honeycomb is unique in its ability to calculate metrics and statistics on the fly, while retaining the full-resolution log lines (and the original MySQL query that started it all!).

Once you have got data flowing, be sure to take a look at our starter queries! Our entry points will help you see how we recommend comparing lock retention by normalized query, scan efficiency by collection, or read vs. write distribution by host.

The agent used to translate logs to events and send them to Honeycomb is called honeytail.

Configure MySQL Query Logging 

Before running honeytail, you will want to turn slow query logging on for all queries if possible. To turn on slow query logging for your MySQL host, run the following in your MySQL shell:

mysql> SET GLOBAL slow_query_log = 'ON';

Set the threshold for a query to be considered a “slow” query to 0 (the default is 10):

mysql> SET GLOBAL long_query_time = 0;

And verify the slow query log’s location via:

mysql> SELECT @@GLOBAL.slow_query_log_file;

Install and Run Honeytail 

On your MySQL host, download and install the latest honeytail by running:

wget -q https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail_1.8.2_amd64.deb

echo 'c9101060b782c34045f359bfe7b7a0a95c6a54eb97ed51777b053a769afa823b  honeytail_1.8.2_amd64.deb' | sha256sum -c

sudo dpkg -i honeytail_1.8.2_amd64.deb

wget -q https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail_1.8.2_arm64.deb

echo 'c5a03a2ef4b850be35fb3809173efd3d6e8b16c52b770f61691355b7d39505b0  honeytail_1.8.2_arm64.deb' | sha256sum -c

sudo dpkg -i honeytail_1.8.2_arm64.deb

wget -q https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail-1.8.2-1.x86_64.rpm

echo 'bccdedc9aa3776b827899cc0003b9f23f3a9c3b366ce2c8de9d2d943a474d306  honeytail-1.8.2-1.x86_64.rpm' | sha256sum -c

sudo rpm -i honeytail-1.8.2-1.x86_64.rpm

wget -q -O honeytail https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail-linux-amd64

echo 'd774112265ee8e98c6221232461cf36c35faf844005cc98b43b55bb375761766  honeytail' | shasum -a 256 -c

chmod 755 ./honeytail

wget -q -O honeytail https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail-linux-arm64

echo 'c5a57a729b0ccf4ca0f2287c862538812604f5fd67d102372e91215701afdbe1  honeytail' | shasum -a 256 -c

chmod 755 ./honeytail

wget -q -O honeytail https://honeycomb.io/download/honeytail/v1.8.2/honeytail-darwin-amd64

echo '49c976e9b98fa238c265ec6afce35d41767a3f8d67defa547bff933485f40a83  honeytail' | shasum -a 256 -c

chmod 755 ./honeytail

git clone https://github.com/honeycombio/honeytail

cd honeytail; go install

Make sure you have enabled MySQL query logging before running honeytail.

To consume the current MySQL slow query log from the beginning, run:

honeytail --writekey=YOUR_API_KEY --dataset=MySQL --parser=mysql \
  --file=/usr/local/var/mysql/myhost-slow.log \
  --tail.read_from=beginning

Troubleshooting 

First, check out honeytail Troubleshooting for general debugging tips.

No data is being sent, and --debug does not seem to show anything useful 

Take a look at the --file being handed to honeytail and make sure they look like MySQL slow query logs, with blocks of comments containing metadata alternating with the MySQL commands issued.

An example excerpt from a MySQL slow query log might look like:

# Time: 151008  0:31:03
# User@Host: rails[rails] @  [10.252.10.158]
# Query_time: 0.000547  Lock_time: 0.000019 Rows_sent: 1  Rows_examined: 938
use rails;
SET timestamp=1444264263;
SELECT `app_data`.* FROM `app_data` WHERE (`app_data`.user_id = 69213) LIMIT 1;

If your log file looks like a normal MySQL output log but honeytail is still failing to send events to Honeycomb, let us know! Join our Pollinators Community Slack to ask questions and learn more.

Only Some Queries Seem to Appear in Honeycomb 

Did you remember to SET the GLOBAL long_query_time? Our parser relies on reading your server’s slow query logs, which contain much more valuable metadata than the general log—and the default slow query threshold is 10 seconds.

Try checking the output of:

mysql> SELECT @@GLOBAL.long_query_time;

If it is not 0, take another look at the steps to Configure MySQL Query Logging.

Still Having Trouble? 

Join our Pollinators Community Slack to ask questions and learn more.

Run Honeytail Continuously 

To run honeytail continuously as a daemon process, first modify the config file /etc/honeytail/honeytail.conf and uncomment and set:

• ParserName to mysql
• WriteKey to your API key, available from the account page
• LogFiles to the path for your MySQL slow query log file, often located at /usr/local/var/mysql/myhost-slow.log
• Dataset to the name of the dataset you wish to create with this log file.

Then start honeytail using upstart or systemd:

sudo initctl start honeytail

sudo systemctl start honeytail

Backfill Archived Logs 

You may have archived logs that you would like to import into Honeycomb. If you have a MySQL logfile located at /usr/local/var/mysql/myhost-slow.16.log, you can backfill using this command:

honeytail --writekey=YOUR_API_KEY --dataset=MySQL --parser=mysql \
  --file=/usr/local/var/mysql/myhost-slow.16.log \
  --backfill

This command can be used at any point to backfill from archived log files. You can read more about honeytail’s backfill behavior here.

Once you have finished backfilling your old logs, we recommend transitioning to the default streaming behavior to stream live logs to Honeycomb.

Scrub Personally Identifiable Information 

While we believe strongly in the value of being able to track down the precise query causing a problem, we understand the concerns of exporting log data, which may contain sensitive user information.

With that in mind, we recommend using honeytail’s MySQL parser, but adding a --scrub_field=query flag to hash the concrete query value. The normalized_query attribute will still be representative of the shape of the query, and identifying patterns including specific queries will still be possible—but the sensitive information will be completely obscured before leaving your servers.

More information about dropping or scrubbing sensitive fields can be found here.

Example Extracted MySQL Fields 

Ingesting a MySQL log line (resulting from a SELECT with a JOIN):

# Time: 161019 18:30:00
# User@Host: rdsadmin[rdsadmin] @ localhost [127.0.0.1]  Id:     1
# Query_time: 1.294391  Lock_time: 0.000119 Rows_sent: 4049  Rows_examined: 4049
SET timestamp=1476901800;
SELECT teams.* FROM teams INNER JOIN users_teams ON team_id=teams.id WHERE user_id=21782 AND slug='foobar' LIMIT 1

will produce an event for Honeycomb that looks like:

Numbers are ingested as floats by default in Honeycomb, though you can coerce a field to integers in the Schema section of your dataset’s Overview.

You can find more on our MySQL query normalization in our mysqltools repository.

Open Source 

Honeytail is open source and Apache 2.0 licensed.

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If you have questions, join our Pollinators Community Slack!
Pro/Enterprise users can visit Honeycomb Support or email support@honeycomb.io.

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