by Ken Task.
Sounds like RedHat or CentOS box. That about right? Both are, errr, shall we say 'conservative' when it comes to 'lastest/greatest' PHP or MySQL. On a CentOS 6.3 box had to use the remi repo to get 5.5.29 of MySQL.
From download.moodle.org requirement for 2.4.1 MySQL 5.1.33
Here's mysql docs on your version concerning bin logging:
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/binary-log.html
Thought migration path had to be 2.2.7 to 2.3.x then to 2.4.1+ cause 2.4.x required 2.3. Hopefully, you've installed your 2.2.7+ with git. One can rather easily move to 2.3 and then to 2.4 via git.
'spirit of sharing', Ken