As a spin-off from the previous post, https://mysqlmed.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/get-the-auditors-in/, I thought that it would be good to see how well the Audit plugin upgrades to MySQL 8. The big change in auditing is that the tables change from MyISAM to InnoDB, so keep your eyes open.

I’m using the previously used instance in version 5.7.18.

Preparation

Before we do anything, let’s make sure auditing will be in place when we restart the instance with 8.0.12:

Uncomment the plugin-load & audit-log params we had originally commented out. After all, this is something we should have done in the last post (apologies!):

vi my_audit.cnf:
  ..
  [mysqld]
  plugin-load =audit_log.so
  audit-log =FORCE_PLUS_PERMANENT
  ..

Restart the 5.7 instance so we upgrade from a rebooted / ‘as real as can be …

Here I have been looking into using the MySQL Enterprise Edition Audit Log plugin for 5.7. We have many options to audit (filters, encryption, compression, Workbench, rotation & purging, viewing the log, etc.) and it’s quite clear cut on what we’re auditing and not when active.

If you’re looking to go deep into the Audit Plugin, as part of the Enterprise Edition, you’ll want to look at the following Support note:

Master Note for MySQL Enterprise Audit Log Plugin (Doc ID 2299419.1)

And if you’re looking for other Audit Plugin examples, I’d recommend Tony Darnell’s blog post:

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