MySQL log files are taking a lot of disk space – How to disable and delete them?

I have WAMP server installed on my local computer for PHP and MySQL development. After using it for a while, the MySQL installation folder has run up some seriously huge log files that are taking enormous amount of disk space. We are talking 10s of GB here. The file names are like ibdata1, mysql-bin.000017, etc.. It appears it’s because I frequently have large databases in and out by the ‘mysql’ and ‘mysqldump’ command, building up large stacks of data importing and exporting logs for data rollback and recovery or something.

Simply deleting the log files may result in problems such as being unable to start MySQL again. Tried that and I had to reinstall it to make it work again.

After some searching, I’ve found this query to solve my problem. Just execute it after you have logged in MySQL via command line — of course you will need the root privileges:

PURGE BINARY LOGS BEFORE '2036-12-12 12:12:12';

Something like that would purge and delete all the huge logs to free the disk. Just make the date time to be as sci-fi as possible so that all log files are purged.

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