If the mysqld server does not start or it crashes easily, you can try to create a trace file to find the problem.

To do this, you must have a mysqld that has been compiled with debugging support. You can check this by executing mysqld -V. If the version number ends with -debug, it is compiled with support for trace files. (On Windows, the debugging server is named mysqld-debug rather than mysqld.)

Start the mysqld server with a trace log in /tmp/mysqld.trace on Unix or \mysqld.trace on Windows:

$> mysqld --debug

On Windows, you should also use the --standalone flag to not start mysqld as a service. In a console window, use this command:

C:\> mysqld-debug --debug --standalone

After this, you can use the mysql.exe command-line tool in a second console window to reproduce the problem. You can stop the mysqld server with mysqladmin shutdown.

The trace file can become very large! To generate a smaller trace file, you can use debugging options something like this:

mysqld --debug=d,info,error,query,general,where:O,/tmp/mysqld.trace

This only prints information with the most interesting tags to the trace file.

If you file a bug, please add only those lines from the trace file to the bug report that indicate where something seems to go wrong. If you cannot locate the wrong place, open a bug report and upload the whole trace file to the report, so that a MySQL developer can take a look at it. For instructions, see Section 1.6, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”.

The trace file is made with the DBUG package by Fred Fish. See Section 7.9.4, “The DBUG Package”.