show slave status \G Important to look out for: Slave_IO_Running: Yes Slave_SQL_Running: No The following means that the master and slave are communicating. The master is sending over the IO commands and the slave is receiving them Slave_IO_Running: Yes The Slave is NOT running the IO commands sent from the Master Slave_SQL_Running: No \\ == Slave Behind Master? == mysql -e 'show slave status\G'|grep -i behind == Slave SQL/IO Running? == mysql -e 'SHOW SLAVE STATUS\G;' | grep -i slave*running