Enable General Log on Mariadb 10.1

The general log comes in handy when you want to see each and every single task the mysql / mariadb server performs. Setting this up is pretty straight forward.

Edit the mariadb config file at /etc/my.cnf.d/server.conf and add the following lines under [mysqld]:

general_log = 1
general_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql_general.log

The first line enables general logging and the second specifies the file to output all the data to.

You’ll need to create the output file manually and change it’s owner to mysql.