Enable the binary logs for MySQL incremental / differential backup

Note: You don't need to enable the binary logs if you just want to make full backup.

How to enable the binary logs for MySQL incremental / differential backup?

Step 1: Open the my.ini file ( on Windows ), or my.cnf file ( on Linux ) under the installation folder of the source MySQL server.

Step 2: Add the following lines to the my.ini ( or my.cnf ) file:

[mysqld]
server-id[=value]
log-bin[=base_name]
log-bin-index[=base_name]

For example:
[mysqld]
server-id=1
log-bin=C:/Program Files/MySQL/logbin.log
log-bin-index=C:/Program Files/MySQL/logbin.index

Note: You can enter any names of the folder and the file. The installation folder of the source MySQL server is recommended.

If no base_name value is given, the default name is the value of the pid-file option (which by default is the name of host machine) followed by -bin.
If you supply an extension in the log name, the extension is silently removed and ignored, mysqld appends a numeric extension to the binary log basename to generate binary log file names. The number increases each time the server creates a new log file, thus creating an ordered series of files.

Step 3: After changing and saving the file my.ini ( or my.cnf ), please restart MySQL server to make the binary logs work.

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