Oracle 5.0 Reference Manual page 2843

The trace file can become very large! To generate a smaller trace file, you can use debugging options
something like this:
mysqld --debug=d,info,error,query,general,where:O,/tmp/mysqld.trace
This only prints information with the most interesting tags to the trace file.
If you make a bug report about this, please only send the lines from the trace file to the appropriate
mailing list where something seems to go wrong! If you can't locate the wrong place, you can open a
bug report and upload the trace file to the report, so that a MySQL developer can take a look at it. For
instructions, see
The trace file is made with the DBUG package by Fred Fish. See
Package".
21.3.1.3. Using
pdb
Starting with MySQL 5.0.24 the Program Database files (extension pdb) are included in the Noinstall
distribution of MySQL. These files provide information for debugging your MySQL installation in the
event of a problem.
The PDB file contains more detailed information about
detailed trace and dump files to be created. You can use these with Dr Watson,
Studio to debug mysqld.
For more information on PDB files, see
information on the debugging options available, see
Dr Watson is installed with all Windows distributions, but if you have installed Windows development
tools, Dr Watson may have been replaced with WinDbg, the debugger included with Visual Studio, or
the debugging tools provided with Borland or Delphi.
To generate a crash file using Dr Watson, follow these steps:
1. Start Dr Watson by running
C:\> drwtsn32 -i
2. Set the Log File Path to the directory where you want to store trace files.
3. Make sure Dump All Thread Contexts and Append To Existing Log File.
4. Uncheck Dump Symbol Table, Visual Notification, Sound Notification and Create Crash Dump
File.
5. Set the Number of Instructions to a suitable value to capture enough calls in the stacktrace. A
value of at 25 should be enough.
Note that the file generated can become very large.
21.3.1.4. Debugging
On most systems you can also start
With some older
to debug
mysqld
upgrade to
gdb
NPTL threads (the new thread library on Linux) may cause problems while running
Some symptoms are:
Debugging a MySQL Server
Section 1.7, "How to Report Bugs or
to create a Windows crashdump
drwtsn32.exe
under
mysqld gdb
mysqld
versions on Linux you must use
gdb
threads. In this case, you can only have one thread active at a time. It is best to
5.1 because thread debugging works much better with this version!
Problems".
mysqld
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
Debugging Tools for
interactively using the
from to get more information if
gdb
run --one-thread
2823
Section 21.3.3, "The DBUG
and other tools that enables more
WinDbg
121366. For more
Windows.
option:
-i
mysqld
if you want to be able
mysqld
and Visual
crashes.
under gdb.