Starting MariaDB Shell

Start MariaDB Shell, connect to a server when it starts, choose SQL or Python mode, get help, and exit.

Start the Shell

Run mariadb-shell, or its short alias msh, from a terminal:

mariadb-shell

The shell prints a welcome message and an SQL prompt. Without connection data, the shell starts without a session, and the prompt shows only the vendor name and the current mode:

Welcome to the MariaDB Shell 26.9.5.

Copyright (c) 2016, 2026, Oracle, MariaDB plc and others.

Type '\help' or '\?' for help; '\quit' to exit.
MariaDB  SQL >

To suppress the welcome message, start the shell with --quiet-start. With --quiet-start=2, the shell prints only errors at startup.

Connect When the Shell Starts

To open a session at startup, pass a connection URI as the first argument. The URI has the form [scheme://][user[:password]@]host[:port][/schema], and the mariadb:// scheme is optional:

mariadb-shell mariadb://app_user@db1.example.com:3306/shop

You can also use individual options:

mariadb-shell --user=app_user --host=db1.example.com --port=3306 --schema=shop

When the connection data has no password, the shell prompts for it:

Please provide the password for 'app_user@db1.example.com:3306':

After a successful login, the shell can offer to save the password in the platform's credential store, so that later connections to the same account don't prompt again. See Credential Store.

The following options control how the shell obtains the password:

Option	Description
-p, --password	Prompt for the password.
--password=<password>	Use the given password. Other users of the system may be able to see it in the process list, so prefer a prompt, the credential store, or an option file.
--no-password	Connect with an empty password and don't prompt.
--passwords-from-stdin	Read passwords from standard input instead of the terminal, for example in scripts.

The shell also reads connection options from the [mariadb-shell], [mysqlsh], and [client] groups of your option files. See Option Files and Login Paths.

For all connection methods, including sockets, TLS, and SSH tunnels, see Connecting to a Server. For working with the session once it is open, see Sessions.

Choose SQL or Python Mode

MariaDB Shell has two modes:

• SQL mode sends what you type to the server as SQL statements. This is the default mode.
• Python mode runs Python code that uses the shell's global objects, such as session, shell, and util.

To choose the mode at startup, use --sql or --py:

mariadb-shell --py root@localhost

To change the default mode for every start, set the defaultMode configuration option to sql or py and save it in your configuration. In the shell, run:

MariaDB  SQL > \option --persist defaultMode py

From the operating system shell, the same setting is:

mariadb-shell -- shell options set-persist defaultMode py

See Configuration Options.

To switch modes in a running shell, use the \sql and \py commands. The prompt shows the active mode:

MariaDB localhost:3306 ssl  SQL > \py
Switching to Python mode...
MariaDB localhost:3306 ssl  Py > session.server_vendor
MariaDB
MariaDB localhost:3306 ssl  Py > \sql
Switching to SQL mode... Commands end with ;
MariaDB localhost:3306 ssl  SQL >

In Python mode, \sql followed by a statement runs that one statement without switching modes:

MariaDB localhost:3306 ssl  Py > \sql SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sakila.film;

For more about the modes, see SQL and Python Modes. To run commands or script files without an interactive session, see Batch Execution.

Get Help

The built-in help describes every shell command, global object, function, and option of this build. Use \help, or its shortcuts \? and \h:

Command	Shows
\?	The help categories, the shell commands, and the global objects.
\? <command>	Help for a shell command, for example \? \connect.
\? <object>	Help for a global object or class, for example \? util or \? ClassicSession.
\? <object>.<function>	Help for a function, for example \? util.dump_schemas.
\? <keyword>	Help for an SQL statement or function, read from the connected server's help tables, for example \? CREATE SEQUENCE.
\? cmdline	The rules for calling the shell's APIs from the operating system command line.

The pattern after \? can contain the wildcards * (any sequence of characters) and ? (one character). In Python mode, every object also has a help() method, for example util.help("dump_schemas").

The mariadb-shell --help command lists the command-line options. On Linux and macOS, the mariadb-shell(1) manual page describes the options, files, and environment variables. All command-line options are listed in the CLI Reference.

Exit the Shell

To exit, use \quit, its shortcut \q, or \exit. On Linux and macOS, you can also press Ctrl+D on an empty line. The shell closes its sessions and prints Bye!.