There are two options for viewing the query caching on a server:

When logged into mysql you can use the following command to view query cache size (note: 0 means that no caching has been enabled)

show VARIABLES LIKE 'query_cache_size'; 

You can also use the following command for more information:

mysql> show variables like 'query%';
+------------------------------+---------+
| Variable_name                | Value   |
+------------------------------+---------+
| query_alloc_block_size       | 8192    |
| query_cache_limit            | 1048576 |
| query_cache_min_res_unit     | 4096    |
| query_cache_size             | 1239040 |
| query_cache_type             | ON      |
| query_cache_wlock_invalidate | OFF     |
| query_prealloc_size          | 8192    |
+------------------------------+---------+

If you have configured your .my.cnf file then you are able to perform the following command from your shell without needing to enter into mysql:

mysql -e 'show variables;' | grep query_cache_size

Output should look similar to:

+------------------+-------+
| Variable_name    | Value |
+------------------+-------+
| query_cache_size | 0     |
+------------------+-------+

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query_cache_size – This is the size of the cache in bytes. Setting this value to 0 will effectively disable caching.
query_cache_type – This value must be ON or 1 for query caching to be enabled by default.
query_cache_limit – This is the maximum size query (in bytes) that will be cached.

---

The command below is an example of setting the global caching of mysql to 16MB.

set GLOBAL query_cache_size = 16777216;

set global query_cache_limit = 1010101;

An example of editing the /etc/my.cnf file is:

query_cache_size = 268435456
query_cache_type=1
query_cache_limit=1048576