This utility is designed to work exclusively for servers that support global transaction identifiers (GTIDs) and have gtid_mode=ON. MySQL server versions 5.6.5 and higher support GTIDs. See m[blue]Replication with Global Transaction Identifiersm[][1] for more information.

The user can specify the interval in seconds to use for detecting the master status and generating the health report using the --interval option. At each interval, the utility will check to see if the server is alive via a ping operation followed by a check of the connector to detect if the server is still reachable. The ping operation can be controlled with the --ping option (see below).

If the master is found to be offline or unreachable, the utility will execute one of the following actions based on the --failover-mode option value. The available values are:

• auto (default): Execute automatic failover to the list of candidates first and if no slaves are viable, continue to locate a viable candidate from the list of slaves. If no slaves are found to be a viable candidate, the utility will generate and error and exit.

Once a candidate is found, the utility will conduct failover to the best slave. The command will test each candidate slave listed for the prerequisites. Once a candidate slave is elected, it is made a slave of each of the other slaves thereby collecting any transactions executed on other slaves but not the candidate. In this way, the candidate becomes the most up-to-date slave.

• elect: This mode is the same as auto, except if no candidates specified in the list of candidate slaves are viable, then it does not check the remaining slaves, and instead generates an error and then exits.

• fail: This mode produces an error and does not failover when the master is downed. This mode is used to provide periodic health monitoring without the failover action taken.

For all options that permit specifying multiple servers, the options require a comma-separated list of connection parameters in the following form (where the password, port, and socket are optional).:

<*user*>[:<*passwd*>]@<*host*>[:<*port*>][:<*socket*>] or
<*login-path*>[:<*port*>][:<*socket*>]

The utility permits users to discover slaves connected to the master. In order to use the discover slaves feature, all slaves must use the --report-host and --report-port startup variables to specify the correct hostname and port of the slave. If these are missing or report the incorrect information, the slave's health may not be reported correctly or the slave may not be listed at all. The discover slaves feature ignores any slaves to which it cannot connect.

The discover slaves feature is run automatically on each interval.

The utility permits the user to specify an external script to execute before and after the switchover and failover commands. The user can specify these with the --exec-before and --exec-after options. The return code of the script is used to determine success thus each script must report 0 (success) to be considered successful. If a script returns a value other than 0, the result code is presented in an error message.

The utility also permits the user to specify a script to be used for detecting a downed master or an application-level event to trigger failover. This can be specified using the --exec-fail-check option. The return code for the script is used to invoke failover. A return code of 0 indicates failover should not take place. A return code other than 0 indicates failover should take place. This is checked at the start of each interval if a script is supplied. The timeout option is not used in this case and the script is run once at the start of each interval.

The utility permits the user to log all actions taken during the commands. The --log option requires a valid path and file name of the file to use for logging operations. The log is active only when this option is specified. The option --log-age specifies the age in days that log entries are kept. The default is seven (7) days. Older entries are automatically deleted from the log file (but only if the --log option is specified).

The format of the log file includes the date and time of the event, the level of the event (informational - INFO, warning - WARN, error - ERROR, critical failure - CRITICAL), and the message reported by the utility.

The interface provides a number of options for displaying additional information. You can choose to view the replication health report (default), or choose to view the list of GTIDs in use, the UUIDs in use, or view the log file contents if logging is enabled. Each of these reports is described below.

• health Display the replication health of the topology. This report is the default view for the interface. By default, this includes the host name, port, role (MASTER or SLAVE) of the server, state of the server (UP = is connected, WARN = not connected but can ping, DOWN = not connected and cannot ping), the GTID_MODE, and health state.

The master health state is based on the following: if GTID_MODE=ON, the server must have the binary log enabled, and a user must exist with the REPLICATE SLAVE privilege.

The --seconds-behind option is used to detect when a slave is behind the master. It allows users to set a threshold for reporting purposes only. It does not apply to slave candidacy or selection during failover.

The slave health state is based on the following: the IO_THREAD and SQL_THREADS must be running, it must be connected to the master, there are no errors, the slave delay for non-GTID enabled scenarios is not more than the threshold provided by the --max-position and the slave is reading the correct master log file, and slave delay is not more than the --seconds-behind threshold option.

At each interval, if the discover slaves option was specified at startup and new slaves are discovered, the health report is refreshed.

• gtid: Display the master's list of executed GTIDs, contents of the GTID variables; @@GLOBAL.GTID_EXECUTED, @@GLOBAL.GTID_PURGED, and @@GLOBAL.GTID_OWNED. Thus, you can toggle through the four screens by pressing the 'G' key.

• UUID: Display universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) for all servers.

• Log: This option displays the contents of the log file, which only visible if the --log option is specified. This can be helpful to see when failover occurred, and which actions or messages were recorded at the time.

The user interface is designed to match the size of the terminal window in which it is run. A refresh option is provided to permit users to resize their terminal windows or refresh the display at any time. However, the interface will automatically resize to the terminal window on each interval.

The interface will display the name of the utility, the master's status including binary log file, position, and filters as well as the date and time of the next interval event.

The interface will also permit the user to scroll up or down through a list longer than what the terminal window permits. When a long list is presented, the scroll options become enabled. The user can scroll the list up with the up arrow key and down with the down arrow key.

Use the --verbose option to see additional information in the health report and additional messages during failover.

The utility supports two modes of operation. The default mode, running as a console, works as described above. An additional mode that permits you to run the utility as a daemon is provided for POSIX platforms.

When run as a daemon, the utility does not have interactivity. However, all events are written to the log file. You can control what is written to the log by using the --report-values option.

To run the utility as a daemon, use the --daemon option. There are four commands that can be used in --daemon option. These include:

• start

Starts the daemon. The --log option is required.

• stop

Stops the daemon. If you used the option --pidfile, the value must be the same when starting the daemon.

• restart

Restarts the daemon. If you used the option --pidfile, the value must be the same when starting the daemon.

• nodetach

Starts the daemon, but it will not detach the process from the console. The --log option is required.

• --help

Display a help message and exit.

• --license

Display license information and exit.

• --candidates=<candidate slave connections>

Connection information for candidate slave servers. Valid only with failover command. List multiple slaves in comma-separated list.

To connect to a server, it is necessary to specify connection parameters such as user name, host name, password, and either a port or socket. MySQL Utilities provides a number of ways to supply this information. All of the methods require specifying your choice via a command-line option such as --server, --master, --slave, etc. The methods include the following in order of most secure to least secure.

• Use login-paths from your .mylogin.cnf file (encrypted, not visible). Example : <login-path>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• Use a configuration file (unencrypted, not visible) Note: available in release-1.5.0. Example : <configuration-file-path>[:<section>]

• Specify the data on the command-line (unencrypted, visible). Example : <user>[:<passwd>]@<host>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• --daemon=<command>

Run as a daemon. The command can be start (start daemon), stop (stop daemon), restart (stop then start the daemon) or nodetach (start but do not detach the process). This option is only available for POSIX systems.

• --discover-slaves-login=<user:password>

At startup, query master for all registered slaves and use the user name and password specified to connect. Supply the user and password in the form <user>[:<passwd>] or <login-path>. For example, --discover=joe:secret will use 'joe' as the user and 'secret' as the password for each discovered slave.

• --exec-after=<script>

Name of script to execute after failover or switchover. Script name may include the path.

• --exec-before=<script>

Name of script to execute before failover or switchover. Script name may include the path.

• --exec-fail-check=<script>

Name of script to execute on each interval to invoke failover.

• --exec-post-failover=<script>

Name of script to execute after failover is complete and the utility has refreshed the health report.

• --failover-mode=<mode>, -f <mode>

Action to take when the master fails. 'auto' = automatically fail to best slave, 'elect' = fail to candidate list or if no candidate meets criteria fail, 'fail' = take no action and stop when master fails. Default = 'auto'.

• --force

Override the registration check on master for multiple instances of the console monitoring the same master. See notes.

• --interval=<seconds>, -i <seconds>

Interval in seconds for polling the master for failure and reporting health. Default = 15 seconds. Minimum is 5 seconds.

• --log=<log_file>

Specify a log file to use for logging messages

• --log-age=<days>

Specify maximum age of log entries in days. Entries older than this will be purged on startup. Default = 7 days.

• --master=<connection>

Connection information for the master server.

To connect to a server, it is necessary to specify connection parameters such as user name, host name, password, and either a port or socket. MySQL Utilities provides a number of ways to supply this information. All of the methods require specifying your choice via a command-line option such as --server, --master, --slave, etc. The methods include the following in order of most secure to least secure.

• Use login-paths from your .mylogin.cnf file (encrypted, not visible). Example : <login-path>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• Use a configuration file (unencrypted, not visible) Note: available in release-1.5.0. Example : <configuration-file-path>[:<section>]

• Specify the data on the command-line (unencrypted, visible). Example : <user>[:<passwd>]@<host>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• --max-position=<position>

Used to detect slave delay. The maximum difference between the master's log position and the slave's reported read position of the master. A value greater than this means the slave is too far behind the master. Default = 0.

• --pedantic, -p

Used to stop failover if some inconsistencies are found, such as errant transactions on slaves or SQL thread errors, during server checks. By default, the utility only generates warnings if issues are found when checking a slave's status during failover, and it will continue its execution unless this option is specified.

• --pidfile=<pidfile>

Pidfile for running mysqlfailover as a daemon. This file contains the PID (process identifier), that uniquely identifies a process. It is needed to identify and control the process forked by mysqlfailover.

• --ping=<number>

Number of seconds between ping attempts. Exactly 3 ping operations are attempted, one every --ping seconds. The default --ping value is 3.

Note
On some platforms, this is the same as number of seconds to wait for ping to return.

• --report-values=<report_values>

Report values used in mysqlfailover running as a daemon. It can be health, gtid or uuid. Multiple values can be used separated by commas.

• health

Display the replication health of the topology.

• gtid

Display the master's list of executed GTIDs, contents of the GTID variables; @@GLOBAL.GTID_EXECUTED, @@GLOBAL.GTID_PURGED and @@GLOBAL.GTID_OWNED.

• uuid

Display universally unique identifiers (UUIDs) for all servers.

Default = health.

• --rpl-user=:<replication_user>

The user and password for the replication user requirement, in the form: <user>[:<password>] or <login-path>. E.g. rpl:passwd

Default = None.

• --script-threshold=<return_code>

Value for external scripts to trigger aborting the operation if result is greater than or equal to the threshold.

Default = None (no threshold checking).

• --seconds-behind=<seconds>

Used to detect slave delay (only for health reporting purposes). The maximum number of seconds behind the master permitted before slave is considered behind the master in the health report state. Default = 0.

• --slaves=<slave connections>

Connection information for slave servers. List multiple slaves in comma-separated list. The list will be evaluated literally whereby each server is considered a slave to the master listed regardless if they are a slave of the master.

To connect to a server, it is necessary to specify connection parameters such as user name, host name, password, and either a port or socket. MySQL Utilities provides a number of ways to supply this information. All of the methods require specifying your choice via a command-line option such as --server, --master, --slave, etc. The methods include the following in order of most secure to least secure.

• Use login-paths from your .mylogin.cnf file (encrypted, not visible). Example : <login-path>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• Use a configuration file (unencrypted, not visible) Note: available in release-1.5.0. Example : <configuration-file-path>[:<section>]

• Specify the data on the command-line (unencrypted, visible). Example : <user>[:<passwd>]@<host>[:<port>][:<socket>]

• --ssl-ca

The path to a file that contains a list of trusted SSL CAs.

• --ssl-cert

The name of the SSL certificate file to use for establishing a secure connection.

• --ssl-key

The name of the SSL key file to use for establishing a secure connection.

• --ssl

Specifies if the server connection requires use of SSL. If an encrypted connection cannot be established, the connection attempt fails. Default setting is 0 (SSL not required).

• --timeout=<seconds>

Maximum timeout in seconds to wait for each replication command to complete. For example, timeout for slave waiting to catch up to master.

Default = 3.

• --verbose, -v

Specify how much information to display. Use this option multiple times to increase the amount of information. For example, -v = verbose, -vv = more verbose, -vvv = debug.

• --version

Display version information and exit.

The DROP, CREATE, INSERT and SELECT privileges are required to register the failover instance on the initial master or the new master (after a successful failover). Therefore, since any slave can become the new master, slaves and candidates also require those privileges. The utility checks permissions for the master, slaves, and candidates at startup.

At startup, the console will attempt to register itself with the master. If another console is already registered, and the failover mode is auto or elect, the console will be blocked from running failover. When a console quits, it unregisters itself from the master. If this process is broken, the user may override the registration check by using the --force option.

Mixing IP and hostnames is not recommended. The replication-specific utilities will attempt to compare hostnames and IP addresses as aliases for checking slave connectivity to the master. However, if your installation does not support reverse name lookup, the comparison could fail. Without the ability to do a reverse name lookup, the replication utilities could report a false negative that the slave is (not) connected to the master.

For example, if you setup replication using MASTER_HOST=ubuntu.net on the slave and later connect to the slave with mysqlrplcheck and have the master specified as --master=192.168.0.6 using the valid IP address for ubuntu.net, you must have the ability to do a reverse name lookup to compare the IP (192.168.0.6) and the hostname (ubuntu.net) to determine if they are the same machine.

Similarly, in order to avoid issues mixing local IP '127.0.0.1' with 'localhost', all the addresses '127.0.0.1' will be internally converted to 'localhost' by the utility. Nevertheless, It is best to use the actual hostname of the master when connecting or setting up replication.

The utility will check to see if the slaves are using the option --master-info-repository=TABLE. If they are not, the utility will stop with an error.

The path to the MySQL client tools should be included in the PATH environment variable in order to use the authentication mechanism with login-paths. This will allow the utility to use the my_print_defaults tools which is required to read the login-path values from the login configuration file (.mylogin.cnf).

The console creates a special table in the mysql database that is used to keep track of which instance is communicating with the master. If you use the --force option, the console will remove the rows in this table. The table is constructed with:

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS mysql.failover_console (host char(30), port char(10))

When the console starts, a row is inserted containing the hostname and port of the master. On startup, if a row matches these values, the console will not start. If you use the --force option, the row is deleted.

When running the utility using the --daemon=nodetach option, the --pidfile option can be omitted. It will be ignored if used.

When using the external scripts, the following parameters are passed in the order shown.

For example, suppose you have a script named 'run_before.sh' and you specify that you want it executing before the failover is performed (using the --exec-before option). Further, let us assume the master MySQL Server is using port 3306 on the host 'host1' and the MySQL Server that will become the new master is using port 3308 on host 'can_host2'. The script would therefore be invoked in the following manner.

% run_before.sh host1 3306 can_host2 3308

Table 5.2. External Script Parameters

EXAMPLES.PP To launch the utility, you must specify at a minimum the --master option and either the --discover-slaves-login option or the --slaves option. The --discover-slaves-login option can be used in conjunction with the --slaves option to specify a list of known slaves (or slaves that do not report their host and IP) and to discover any other slaves connected to the master.

An example of the user interface and some of the report views are shown in the following examples.

Note

The "GTID Executed Set" will display the first GTID listed in the SHOW MASTER STATUS view. If there are multiple GTIDs listed, the utility shall display [...] to indicate there are additional GTIDs to view. You can view the complete list of GTIDs on the GTID display screens.

The default interface will display the replication health report like the following. In this example the log file is enabled. A sample startup command is shown below:

shell> mysqlfailover --master=root@localhost:3331 --discover-slaves-login=root --log=log.txt
MySQL Replication Monitor and Failover Utility
Failover Mode = auto     Next Interval = Mon Mar 19 15:56:03 2012
Master Information
------------------
Binary Log File   Position  Binlog_Do_DB  Binlog_Ignore_DB
mysql-bin.000001  571
GTID Executed Set
2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7 [...]
Replication Health Status
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
| host       | port  | role    | state  | gtid_mode  | health  |
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
| localhost  | 3331  | MASTER  | UP     | ON         | OK      |
| localhost  | 3332  | SLAVE   | UP     | ON         | OK      |
| localhost  | 3333  | SLAVE   | UP     | ON         | OK      |
| localhost  | 3334  | SLAVE   | UP     | ON         | OK      |
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
Q-quit R-refresh H-health G-GTID Lists U-UUIDs L-log entries

Press Q to exit the utility, R to refresh the current display, and H returns to the replication health report.

Press G key to show a GTID report similar to the following. The first page shown is the master's executed GTID set:

MySQL Replication Monitor and Failover Utility
Failover Mode = auto     Next Interval = Mon Mar 19 15:59:33 2012
Master Information
------------------
Binary Log File   Position  Binlog_Do_DB  Binlog_Ignore_DB
mysql-bin.000001  571
GTID Executed Set
2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7 [...]
Master GTID Executed Set
+-------------------------------------------+
| gtid                                      |
+-------------------------------------------+
| 2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7  |
| 5503D37E-2DB2-11E2-A781-8077D4C14B33:1-3  |
+-------------------------------------------+
Q-quit R-refresh H-health G-GTID Lists U-UUIDs L-log entries Up|Down-scroll

Continuing to press G key cycles through the three GTID lists.

If the list is longer than the screen permits as shown in the example above, the scroll up and down help is also shown. In this case, press the down arrow key to scroll down.

Press U to view the list of UUIDs used in the topology, for example:

MySQL Replication Monitor and Failover Utility
Failover Mode = auto     Next Interval = Mon Mar 19 16:02:34 2012
Master Information
------------------
Binary Log File   Position  Binlog_Do_DB  Binlog_Ignore_DB
mysql-bin.000001  571
GTID Executed Set
2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7 [...]
UUIDs
+------------+-------+---------+---------------------------------------+
| host       | port  | role    | uuid                                  |
+------------+-------+---------+---------------------------------------+
| localhost  | 3331  | MASTER  | 55c65a00-71fd-11e1-9f80-ac64ef85c961  |
| localhost  | 3332  | SLAVE   | 5dd30888-71fd-11e1-9f80-dc242138b7ec  |
| localhost  | 3333  | SLAVE   | 65ccbb38-71fd-11e1-9f80-bda8146bdb0a  |
| localhost  | 3334  | SLAVE   | 6dd6abf4-71fd-11e1-9f80-d406a0117519  |
+------------+-------+---------+---------------------------------------+
Q-quit R-refresh H-health G-GTID Lists U-UUIDs L-log entries

If, once the master is detected as down and failover mode is auto or elect and there are viable candidate slaves, the failover feature will engage automatically and the user will see the failover messages appear. When failover is complete, the interface returns to monitoring replication health after 5 seconds. The following shows an example of failover occurring.:

Failover starting...
# Candidate slave localhost:3332 will become the new master.
# Preparing candidate for failover.
# Creating replication user if it does not exist.
# Stopping slaves.
# Performing STOP on all slaves.
# Switching slaves to new master.
# Starting slaves.
# Performing START on all slaves.
# Checking slaves for errors.
# Failover complete.
# Discovering slaves for master at localhost:3332
Failover console will restart in 5 seconds.

After the failover event, the new topology is shown in the replication health report.:

MySQL Replication Monitor and Failover Utility
Failover Mode = auto     Next Interval = Mon Mar 19 16:05:12 2012
Master Information
------------------
Binary Log File   Position  Binlog_Do_DB  Binlog_Ignore_DB
mysql-bin.000001  1117
GTID Executed Set
2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7 [...]
UUIDs
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
| host       | port  | role    | state  | gtid_mode  | health  |
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
| localhost  | 3332  | MASTER  | UP     | ON         | OK      |
| localhost  | 3333  | SLAVE   | UP     | ON         | OK      |
| localhost  | 3334  | SLAVE   | UP     | ON         | OK      |
+------------+-------+---------+--------+------------+---------+
Q-quit R-refresh H-health G-GTID Lists U-UUIDs L-log entries

Pressing L with the --log option specified causes the interface to show the entries in the log file, such as:

MySQL Replication Monitor and Failover Utility
Failover Mode = auto     Next Interval = Mon Mar 19 16:06:13 2012
Master Information
------------------
Binary Log File   Position  Binlog_Do_DB  Binlog_Ignore_DB
mysql-bin.000001  1117
GTID Executed Set
2A67DE00-2DA1-11E2-A711-00764F2BE90F:1-7 [...]
Log File
+-------------------------+----------------------------------------- ... --+
| Date                    | Entry                                    ...   |
+-------------------------+----------------------------------------- ... --+
| 2012-03-19 15:55:33 PM  | INFO Failover console started.           ...   |
| 2012-03-19 15:55:33 PM  | INFO Failover mode = auto.               ...   |
| 2012-03-19 15:55:33 PM  | INFO Getting health for master: localhos ...   |
| 2012-03-19 15:55:33 PM  | INFO Master status: binlog: mysql-bin.00 ...   |
+-------------------------+----------------------------------------- ... --+
Q-quit R-refresh H-health G-GTID Lists U-UUIDs L-log entries Up|Down-scroll\

PERMISSIONS REQUIRED.PP The user must have permissions to monitor the servers on the topology and configure replication to successfully perform the failover operation. Additional permissions are also required to register and unregister the running mysqlfailover instance on the master and slaves. Specifically, the login user must have the following privileges: SUPER, GRANT OPTION, REPLICATION SLAVE, RELOAD, DROP, CREATE, INSERT, and SELECT.

The referred permissions are required for the login users used for all servers (master, slaves and candidates).