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.

Recovery on Ivan Luminaria

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