Mariadb on Ivan Luminaria

Binary logs in MySQL: what they are, how to manage them, and when you can delete them

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:03:00 +0100

The message in the infrastructure team’s Slack channel was the kind that makes you look up from your screen: “Disk at 95% on the production db. Anyone able to look?”

The server was a MySQL 8.0 on Rocky Linux, a business management system used by about a hundred users. The database itself was around 40 GB — nothing extraordinary. But in the data directory there were 180 GB of binary logs. Six months’ worth of binlogs that nobody had ever thought to manage.

Galera Cluster with 3 nodes: how I solved a MySQL availability problem

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 08:03:00 +0100

The ticket was laconic, as it often is when the problem is serious: “The database went down again. The application is stopped. Third time in two months.”

The client had a MariaDB on a single Linux server — a business management application used by about two hundred internal users, with load spikes during end-of-month accounting closures. Every time the server had a problem — a disk slowing down, a system update requiring a reboot, a process consuming all the RAM — the database crashed and with it the entire business operations.

MySQL Users: Why 'mario' and 'mario'@'localhost' Are Not the Same Person

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 08:03:00 +0100

A few weeks ago a client calls me. Pragmatic tone, seemingly trivial request:

“I need to create a user on MySQL for an application that needs to access a database. Can you take care of it?”

Sure. CREATE USER, `GRANT` , next.