Delete/Purging mysql-bin (binlog) files safely

The file mysql-bin.index keeps a list of all binary logs mysqld has generated and auto-rotated. The mechanisms for cleaning out the binlogs in conjunction with mysql-bin.index are:

PURGE BINARY LOGS TO ‘binlogname’;
PURGE BINARY LOGS BEFORE ‘datetimestamp’;

These will clear all binary logs before the binlog or timestamp you just specified. For example, if you login to mysql run

mysql> PURGE BINARY LOGS TO ‘mysql-bin.000223’;

this will erase all binary logs before ‘mysql-bin.000223’.

If you run

mysql> PURGE BINARY LOGS BEFORE DATE(NOW() – INTERVAL 3 DAY) + INTERVAL 0 SECOND;

this will erase all binary logs before midnight 3 days ago.

If you want to have binlog rotated away automatically and keep 3 days woth, simply set this:

mysql> SET GLOBAL expire_logs_days = 3;

then add this to /etc/my.cnf

[mysqld]
expire-logs-days=3