Note that before starting mysqld with the general query log enabled, you should check all your tables with myisamchk. See Chapter 7, MySQL Server Administration.

If mysqld dies or hangs, you should start mysqld with the general query log enabled. See Section 7.4.3, “The General Query Log”. When mysqld dies again, you can examine the end of the log file for the query that killed mysqld.

If you use the default general query log file, the log is stored in the database directory as host_name.log In most cases it is the last query in the log file that killed mysqld, but if possible you should verify this by restarting mysqld and executing the found query from the mysql command-line tools. If this works, you should also test all complicated queries that did not complete.

You can also try the command EXPLAIN on all SELECT statements that takes a long time to ensure that mysqld is using indexes properly. See Section 15.8.2, “EXPLAIN Statement”.

You can find the queries that take a long time to execute by starting mysqld with the slow query log enabled. See Section 7.4.5, “The Slow Query Log”.

If you find the text mysqld restarted in the error log (normally a file named host_name.err) you probably have found a query that causes mysqld to fail. If this happens, you should check all your tables with myisamchk (see Chapter 7, MySQL Server Administration), and test the queries in the MySQL log files to see whether one fails. If you find such a query, try first upgrading to the newest MySQL version. If this does not help, report a bug, see Section 1.6, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”.

If you have started mysqld with the myisam_recover_options system variable set, MySQL automatically checks and tries to repair MyISAM tables if they are marked as 'not closed properly' or 'crashed'. If this happens, MySQL writes an entry in the hostname.err file 'Warning: Checking table ...' which is followed by Warning: Repairing table if the table needs to be repaired. If you get a lot of these errors, without mysqld having died unexpectedly just before, then something is wrong and needs to be investigated further. See Section 7.1.7, “Server Command Options”.

When the server detects MyISAM table corruption, it writes additional information to the error log, such as the name and line number of the source file, and the list of threads accessing the table. Example: Got an error from thread_id=1, mi_dynrec.c:368. This is useful information to include in bug reports.

It is not a good sign if mysqld did die unexpectedly, but in this case, you should not investigate the Checking table... messages, but instead try to find out why mysqld died.