MySQL: tee saving your output to a file

Tee is a unix command that takes the standard out output of a Unix command and writes it to both your terminal and a file. Until recently I never knew there was a MySQL client command that performed the same function. Today I will show you an example of how to use it.

First login to the MySQL CLI (command line interface)

 $ mysql -uroot -p
 Enter password:
 Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
 Your MySQL connection id is 24839

Once you are in you will have a command prompt. From there simply type tee and the file path and name you want to save to.

 mysql> tee /var/tmp/mysql_tee.out
 Logging to file '/var/tmp/mysql_tee.out'
 mysql> use mysql;
 Reading table information for completion of table and column names
 You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A

 Database changed
 mysql> show tables;
 +---------------------------+
 | Tables_in_mysql           |
 +---------------------------+
 | columns_priv              |
 | db                        |
 | event                     |
 | func                      |
 | general_log               |
 | help_category             |
 | help_keyword              |
 | help_relation             |
 | help_topic                |
 | host                      |
 | ndb_binlog_index          |
 | plugin                    |
 | proc                      |
 | procs_priv                |
 | servers                   |
 | slow_log                  |
 | tables_priv               |
 | time_zone                 |
 | time_zone_leap_second     |
 | time_zone_name            |
 | time_zone_transition      |
 | time_zone_transition_type |
 | user                      |
 +---------------------------+
 23 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now just check your file and make sure your commands were logged.

 $ ls -la /var/tmp/mysql_tee.out
 -rw-r--r-- 1 ubuntu ubuntu 1030 2011-12-22 01:43 /var/tmp/mysql_tee.out

Benjamin's specialty is keeping the lights on for mission critical systems. He is currently building applications that enable high concurrency financial transactions.

Recently Benjamin published his first book; Red Hat Enterprise Linux Troubleshooting Guide. In addition to writing, he has several Open Source projects focused on making Ops easier. These projects include Automatron, a project enabling auto-healing infrastructure for the masses.

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