How to Disable MySQL Binary Logging to Free Disk Space

While developing a Laravel application that performs many temporary writes, the author’s test server on CentOS Stream ran out of disk space because MySQL’s binary logs grew to over 15 GB.

Clean unrelated large files

# find /var -name "*.log" ( ( -size +50M -mtime +7 ) -o -mtime +30 ) -exec truncate {} --size 0 ;
# yum clean all
# rm -rf /var/tmp/yum-*
# package-cleanup --quiet --leaves | xargs yum remove -y
# rm -rf /root/.wp-cli/cache/*
# rm -rf /home/*/.wp-cli/cache/*
# (( $(rpm -E %{rhel}) >= 8 )) && dnf remove $(dnf repoquery --installonly --latest-limit=-2 -q)
# (( $(rpm -E %{rhel}) <= 7 )) && package-cleanup --oldkernels --count=2
# rm -rf /root/.composer/cache
# rm -rf /home/*/.composer/cache
# find -regex ".*/core\.[0-9]+$" -delete
# find /home/*/public_html/ -name error_log -delete
# rm -rf /root/.npm /home/*/.npm /root/.node-gyp /home/*/.node-gyp /tmp/npm-*
# rm -rf /var/cache/mock/* /var/lib/mock/*
# rm -rf /home/*/.cache/*/* /root/.cache/*/*

After these clean‑ups the disk usage improvement was minimal, so the author inspected the MySQL data directory:

du -h / -d 1

The command showed that /var/lib/mysql/ occupied more than 15 GB, with individual binary log files such as binlog.000001 (503 B) up to binlog.000010 (≈1 GB each).

MySQL’s default installation enables binary logging to track changes for replication. In the author’s environment there is only a primary instance, so the logs serve no purpose and consume disk space.

Reset or purge existing binary logs

Log in as root to the MySQL console:

mysql -uroot -p

To delete all binary logs:

RESET MASTER;

To delete only older logs (e.g., older than two days):

PURGE BINARY LOGS BEFORE DATE(NOW() - INTERVAL 2 DAY) + INTERVAL 0 SECOND;

Disable binary logging permanently

Edit the MySQL configuration file and add a line that turns off logging:

sudo vim /etc/mysql/my.cnf

disable-log-bin   # disables binary logging completely
# Optional limits if you still want logs for a short period
# expire_logs_days = 3
# max_binlog_size = 500M

After saving the file, restart MySQL:

sudo service mysqld restart

Warning

If the disable-log-bin line is added before the existing logs are cleared, commands such as RESET MASTER will be ignored and PURGE BINARY LOGS will have no effect. Therefore, clear the logs first, then add the configuration and restart.

Better long‑term solution

The immediate fix solved the disk‑space issue, but the author notes that writing large temporary or binary data to MySQL is not ideal; a different storage solution should be considered for such data.