How to use ‘SHOW PROCESSLIST’ and ‘SHOW FULL PROCESSLUIST’ using MySQL on the command line

Update 28 October 2024

Full processlist isn’t very useful. Instead, just use show processlist.

However, if you’re doing performance tuning for a WHM server, check here:

You’ll get this confirmation box:

You can now check if it worked:

# mysql -uroot -e "SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'innodb_buffer_pool_size';"
+-------------------------+------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+-------------------------+------------+
| innodb_buffer_pool_size | 2147483648 |
+-------------------------+------------+

To continuously watch the MySQL activity:

watch -n1 'mysql -uroot -e "show processlist"'

Old  information

To see what’s happening on a busy MySQL server, use this:

mysql -uroot -e "show full processlist"

If you want to do this continuously, try this:

watch -n1 'mysql -uroot -e "show full processlist"'