SHOW VARIABLES;
SHOW STATUS;
select version();
SHOW STATUS provides server status information like Connections, Opened_tables, Bytes_received, Bytes_sent, etc.
SHOW VARIABLES shows the values of MySQL system variables like time_zone, version, max_connections, etc.
References: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3939803/how-to-get-mysql-server-info-using-command-line