Mysql binlog path from mysql console

Question

Is there a way to know the bin log files path from mysql console as we can know whether its ON or OFF by using

Select * information_schema.GLOBAL_VARIABLES
where variable_name like '%log_bin%'. 

Answer 1

Use this to show on/off:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'log_bin'

Also:

SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE '%bin%'

Or

SHOW SESSION VARIABLES LIKE ...

More Information: (notice that some of these values and results changed from 5.5 to 5.6!)

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/show-master-status.html

mysql > SHOW MASTER STATUS;
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
| File          | Position | Binlog_Do_DB | Binlog_Ignore_DB |
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+
| mysql-bin.003 | 73       | test         | manual,mysql     |
+---------------+----------+--------------+------------------+

mysql> SHOW BINARY LOGS;
+---------------+-----------+
| Log_name      | File_size |
+---------------+-----------+
| binlog.000015 |    724935 |
| binlog.000016 |    733481 |
+---------------+-----------+

Answer 2

From the docs regarding log-bin"

Setting this option causes the log_bin system variable to be set 
to ON (or 1), and not to the base name. This is a known issue; 
see Bug #19614 for more information.

There is a workaround using mysqld instead in the Bug 19614 which I modified a bit. If you are scripting, you can use from the mysql client (which I found a bit tedious to do, see the next workaround):

mysql >\! dirname $(mysqld --help --verbose 2> /dev/null | egrep "^log-bin " | grep -o "\/.*")

Looks like there is a patch submitted by Mark Callaghan, and it was never committed. There is a function in WP5465 (which is the work in progress for this patch), however it didn't work properly for me, as the location of the logs can be different across setups.