A slave replication server creates two small status files. By default, these files are named master.info and relay-log.info and created in the data directory. Their names and locations can be changed by using the --master-info-file and --relay-log-info-file options. See Section 14.8, “Replication and Binary Logging Options and Variables”.

The two status files contain information like that shown in the output of the SHOW SLAVE STATUS statement, which is discussed in Section 12.5.2, “SQL Statements for Controlling Slave Servers”. Because the status files are stored on disk, they survive a slave server's shutdown. The next time the slave starts up, it reads the two files to determine how far it has proceeded in reading binary logs from the master and in processing its own relay logs.

The master.info file should be protected because it contains the password for connecting to the master. See Section 5.4.2.1, “Administrator Guidelines for Password Security”.

The slave I/O thread updates the master.info file. As of MySQL 4.1, the file includes a line count and information about SSL options. The following table shows the correspondence between the lines in the file and the columns displayed by SHOW SLAVE STATUS.

Before MySQL 4.1, the file does not include a line count or information about SSL options.

The slave SQL thread updates the relay-log.info file. The following table shows the correspondence between the lines in the file and the columns displayed by SHOW SLAVE STATUS.

The contents of the relay-log.info file and the states shown by the SHOW SLAVE STATUS statement might not match if the relay-log.info file has not been flushed to disk. Ideally, you should only view relay-log.info on a slave that is offline (that is, mysqld is not running). For a running system, SHOW SLAVE STATUS should be used.

When you back up the slave's data, you should back up these two status files as well, along with the relay log files. They are needed to resume replication after you restore the slave's data. If you lose the relay logs but still have the relay-log.info file, you can check it to determine how far the SQL thread has executed in the master binary logs. Then you can use CHANGE MASTER TO with the MASTER_LOG_FILE and MASTER_LOG_POS options to tell the slave to re-read the binary logs from that point. This requires that the binary logs still exist on the master server.