Make sure that you have a recent version of MySQL installed on the master and slaves, and that these versions are compatible according to the table shown in Section 14.5, “Replication Compatibility Between MySQL Versions”.

If you encounter a problem, please do not report it as a bug until you have verified that the problem is present in the latest MySQL release.

Set up an account on the master server that the slave server can use to connect. This account must be given the REPLICATION SLAVE privilege. If the account is used only for replication (which is recommended), you don't need to grant any additional privileges.

MySQL Enterprise.  Subscribers to the MySQL Enterprise Monitor are quickly notified if there is a replication master and no account with the REPLICATION SLAVE privilege. For more information, see http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.

Suppose that your domain is mydomain.com and that you want to create an account with a user name of repl such that slave servers can use the account to access the master server from any host in your domain using a password of slavepass. To create the account, use this GRANT statement:

mysql> GRANT REPLICATION SLAVE ON *.*
    -> TO 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass';

For MySQL versions older than 4.0.2, the REPLICATION SLAVE privilege does not exist. Grant the FILE privilege instead:

mysql> GRANT FILE ON *.*
    -> TO 'repl'@'%.mydomain.com' IDENTIFIED BY 'slavepass';

For additional information about setting up user accounts and privileges, see Section 5.6, “MySQL User Account Management”.

Flush all the tables and block write statements by executing a FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK statement:

mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;

For example, if you are using InnoDB tables, you should use the InnoDB Hot Backup tool to obtain a consistent snapshot. This tool records the log name and offset corresponding to the snapshot to be later used on the slave. Hot Backup is a nonfree (commercial) tool that is not included in the standard MySQL distribution. See the InnoDB Hot Backup home page at http://www.innodb.com/wp/products/hot-backup/ for detailed information.

Otherwise, you can obtain a reliable binary snapshot of InnoDB tables only after shutting down the MySQL Server.

An alternative that works for both MyISAM and InnoDB tables is to take an SQL dump of the master instead of a binary copy as described in the preceding discussion. For this, you can use mysqldump --master-data on your master and later load the SQL dump file into your slave. However, this is slower than doing a binary copy.

Leave running the client from which you issue the FLUSH TABLES statement so that the read lock remains in effect. (If you exit the client, the lock is released.) Then take a snapshot of the data on your master server.

The easiest way to create a snapshot is to use an archiving program to make a binary backup of the databases in your master's data directory. For example, use tar on Unix, or PowerArchiver, WinRAR, WinZip, or any similar software on Windows. To use tar to create an archive that includes all databases, change location into the master server's data directory, then execute this command:

shell> tar -cvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar .

If you want the archive to include only a database called this_db, use this command instead:

shell> tar -cvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar ./this_db

Then copy the archive file to the /tmp directory on the slave server host. On that machine, change location into the slave's data directory, and unpack the archive file using this command:

shell> tar -xvf /tmp/mysql-snapshot.tar

You may not want to replicate the mysql database if the slave server has a different set of user accounts from those that exist on the master. In this case, you should exclude it from the archive. You also need not include any log files in the archive, or the master.info or relay-log.info files.

While the read lock placed by FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK is in effect, read the value of the current binary log name and offset on the master:

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

The File column shows the name of the log and Position shows the offset within the file. In this example, the binary log file is mysql-bin.003 and the offset is 73. Record these values. You need them later when you are setting up the slave. They represent the replication coordinates at which the slave should begin processing new updates from the master.

If the master has been running previously without binary logging enabled, the log name and position values displayed by SHOW MASTER STATUS or mysqldump --master-data will be empty. In that case, the values that you need to use later when specifying the slave's log file and position are the empty string ('') and 4.

After you have taken the snapshot and recorded the log name and offset, you can re-enable write activity on the master:

mysql> UNLOCK TABLES;

Make sure that the [mysqld] section of the my.cnf file on the master host includes a log-bin option. The section should also have a server-id=master_id option, where master_id must be a positive integer value from 1 to 2³² – 1. For example:

[mysqld]
log-bin=mysql-bin
server-id=1

If those options are not present, add them and restart the server. The server cannot act as a replication master unless binary logging is enabled.

Stop the server that is to be used as a slave and add the following lines to its my.cnf file:

[mysqld]
server-id=slave_id

The slave_id value, like the master_id value, must be a positive integer value from 1 to 2³² – 1. In addition, it is necessary that the ID of the slave be different from the ID of the master. For example:

[mysqld]
server-id=2

If you are setting up multiple slaves, each one must have a unique server-id value that differs from that of the master and from each of the other slaves. Think of server-id values as something similar to IP addresses: These IDs uniquely identify each server instance in the community of replication partners.

If you do not specify a server-id value, it defaults to 0.

If you made a binary backup of the master server's data, copy it to the slave server's data directory before starting the slave. Make sure that the privileges on the files and directories are correct. The system account that you use to run the slave server must be able to read and write the files, just as on the master.

If you made a backup using mysqldump, start the slave first. The dump file is loaded in a later step.

Start the slave server. If it has been replicating previously, start the slave server with the --skip-slave-start option so that it doesn't immediately try to connect to its master. You also may want to start the slave server with the --log-warnings option to get more messages in the error log about problems (for example, network or connection problems). The option is enabled by default as of MySQL 4.0.19 and 4.1.2, but as of MySQL 4.0.21 and 4.1.3, aborted connections are not logged to the error log unless the value is greater than 1.

If you made a backup of the master server's data using mysqldump, load the dump file into the slave server:

shell> mysql -u root -p < dump_file.sql

Execute the following statement on the slave, replacing the option values with the actual values relevant to your system:

mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO
    ->     MASTER_HOST='master_host_name',
    ->     MASTER_USER='replication_user_name',
    ->     MASTER_PASSWORD='replication_password',
    ->     MASTER_LOG_FILE='recorded_log_file_name',
    ->     MASTER_LOG_POS=recorded_log_position;

The following table shows the maximum allowable length for the string-valued options.

Start the slave threads:

mysql> START SLAVE;