Description:
(cut and pasted from the debian bug report #310579)
This may apply to other versions of mysql-server as well, but it's
something worth noting either way. Earlier today while running massive
amounts of inserts and other such things, I noticed a large slow down.
Eventually I tried to restart the mysql server to have it take a few
minutes to get through the shutdown phase, and an indefinite amount of
time to start back up before I killed it. There were still processes
running when I tried to do a shutdown after as well (which didn't run to
completion).
Eventually I tried to reboot the system, and after waiting for quite a
few minutes, ended up doing a hard reboot.
Then when the system started back up, it hung indefinitely (hours+) at
the init spam where it was loading mysqld. At this time I oculd not ssh
or do anything but ping the machine. Ctrl-C at the console did not help
either, I had to boot into single user mode.
Come to find out, my log partition (/var/log is its own partition)
happened to have become full. And mysqld was trying to write to its log
files, and then going into a "I can't write to my logs, so waiting 30
seconds and trying again" loop. Which it never gives up on. Ever.
While letting my log partition get full is certainly a bad idea, the
fact that the mysql server manages to prevent the system from booting at
all should probably be addressed.
How to repeat:
have /var/log (or wherever you have mysql logs going) filled up, and attempt to restart mysql
Suggested fix:
give up on writing to the log files and exit perhaps? check for ENOSPC?