10.2 How MySQL uses memory

The list below indicates some of the ways that the mysqld server uses memory. Where applicable, the name of the server variable relevant to the memory use is given.

• The key buffer (variable key_buffer) is shared by all threads; Other buffers used by the server are allocated as needed.
• Each connection uses some thread specific space; A stack (64K, variable thread_stack) a connection buffer (variable net_buffer_length), and a result buffer (variable net_buffer_length). The connection buffer and result buffer are dynamically enlarged up to max_allowed_packet when needed. When a query is running a copy of the current query string is also allocated.
• All threads share the same base memory.
• Nothing is memory-mapped yet (except compressed tables, but that's another story). This is because the 32-bit memory space of 4GB is not large enough for most large tables. When we get a system with a 64-bit address space, we may add general support for memory-mapping.
• Each request doing a sequential scan over a table allocates a read buffer (variable record_buffer).
• All joins are done in one pass and most joins can be done without even using a temporary table. Most temporary tables are memory-based (HEAP) tables. Temporary tables with a big record length (calculated as the sum of all column lengths) or that contain BLOB columns are stored on disk. One current problem is that if a HEAP table exceeds the size of tmp_table_size, you get the error The table tbl_name is full. In the future, we will fix this by automatically changing the in-memory (HEAP) table to a disk-based (NISAM) table as necessary. To work around this problem, you can increase the temporary table size by setting the tmp_table_size option to mysqld, or by setting the SQL option SQL_BIG_TABLES in the client program. SET OPTION. In MySQL 3.20, the maximum size of the temporary table was record_buffer*16, so if you are using this version, you have to increase the value of record_buffer. You can also start mysqld with the --big-tables option to always store temporary tables on disk, however, this will affect the speed of all complicated queries.
• Most requests doing a sort allocate a sort buffer and one or two temporary files. 18.5 Where MySQL stores temporary files.
• Almost all parsing and calculating is done in a local memory store. No memory overhead is needed for small items and the normal slow memory allocation and freeing is avoided. Memory is allocated only for unexpectedly large strings (this is done with malloc() and free()).
• Each index file is opened once and the data file is opened once for each concurrently-running thread. For each concurrent thread, a table structure, column structures for each column, and a buffer of size 3 * n is allocated (where n is the maximum row length, not counting BLOB columns). A BLOB uses 5 to 8 bytes plus the length of the BLOB data.
• For each table having BLOB columns, a buffer is enlarged dynamically to read in larger BLOB values. If you scan a table, a buffer as large as the largest BLOB value is allocated.
• Table handlers for all in-use tables are saved in a cache and managed as a FIFO. Normally the cache has 64 entries. If a table has been used by two running threads at the same time, the cache contains two entries for the table. 10.8 How MySQL opens and closes tables.
• A mysqladmin flush-tables command closes all tables that are not in use and marks all in-use tables to be closed when the currently executing thread finishes. This will effectively free most in-use memory.

ps and other system status programs may report that mysqld uses a lot of memory. This may be caused by thread-stacks on different memory addresses. For example, the Solaris version of ps counts the unused memory between stacks as used memory. You can verify this by checking available swap with swap -s. We have tested mysqld with commercial memory-leakage detectors, so there should be no memory leaks.