Chapter 2 Installing MySQL on Linux

MySQL provides a Yum-style software repository for the following Linux platforms:

Currently, the MySQL Yum repository for the above-mentioned platforms provides RPM packages for installing the MySQL server, client, MySQL Workbench, MySQL Utilities, Connector/ODBC, and Connector/Python (not all packages are available for all the platforms; see Installing Additional MySQL Products and Components with Yum for details).

Before You Start

As a popular, open-source software, MySQL, in its original or re-packaged form, is widely installed on many systems from various sources, including different software download sites, software repositories, and so on. The following instructions assume that MySQL is not already installed on your system using a third-party-distributed RPM package; if that is not the case, follow the instructions given in Upgrading MySQL with the MySQL Yum Repository or Section 2.2, “Replacing a Third-Party Distribution of MySQL Using the MySQL Yum Repository”.

Steps for a Fresh Installation of MySQL

Follow the steps below to install the latest GA version of MySQL with the MySQL Yum repository:

At the initial start up of the server, the following happens, given that the data directory of the server is empty:

For more information on the postinstallation procedures, see Postinstallation Setup and Testing.

Installing Additional MySQL Products and Components with Yum

You can use Yum to install and manage individual components of MySQL. Some of these components are hosted in sub-repositories of the MySQL Yum repository: for example, the MySQL Connectors are to be found in the MySQL Connectors Community sub-repository, and the MySQL Workbench in MySQL Tools Community. You can use the following command to list the packages for all the MySQL components available for your platform from the MySQL Yum repository (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> sudo yum --disablerepo=\* --enablerepo='mysql*-community*' list available

Install any packages of your choice with the following command, replacing package-name with name of the package (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> sudo yum install package-name

For example, to install MySQL Workbench on Fedora 24:

shell> sudo dnf install mysql-workbench-community

To install the shared client libraries (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-libs

Updating MySQL with Yum

Besides installation, you can also perform updates for MySQL products and components using the MySQL Yum repository. See Upgrading MySQL with the MySQL Yum Repository for details.

For supported Yum-based platforms (see Section 2.1, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL Yum Repository”, for a list), you can replace a third-party distribution of MySQL with the latest GA release (from the MySQL 5.7 series currently) from the MySQL Yum repository. According to how your third-party distribution of MySQL was installed, there are different steps to follow:

Replacing a Native Third-Party Distribution of MySQL

If you have installed a third-party distribution of MySQL from a native software repository (that is, a software repository provided by your own Linux distribution), follow these steps:

After updating MySQL using the Yum repository, applications compiled with older versions of the shared client libraries should continue to work. However, if you want to recompile applications and dynamically link them with the updated libraries, see Upgrading the Shared Client Libraries, for some special considerations.

Replacing a Nonnative Third-Party Distribution of MySQL

If you have installed a third-party distribution of MySQL from a nonnative software repository (that is, a software repository not provided by your own Linux distribution), follow these steps:

The MySQL APT repository provides deb packages for installing and managing the MySQL server, client, and other components on the following Linux platforms: :

Instructions for using the MySQL APT Repository are available in A Quick Guide to Using the MySQL APT Repository.

The MySQL SLES repository provides RPM packages for installing and managing the MySQL server, client, and other components on SUSE Enterprise Linux Server.

Instructions for using the MySQL SLES repository are available in A Quick Guide to Using the MySQL SLES Repository.

The recommended way to install MySQL on RPM-based Linux distributions is by using the RPM packages provided by Oracle. There are two sources for obtaining them, for the Community Edition of MySQL:

RPM packages for MySQL are listed in the following tables:

The full names for the RPMs have the following syntax:

packagename-version-distribution-arch.rpm

The distribution and arch values indicate the Linux distribution and the processor type for which the package was built. See the table below for lists of the distribution identifiers:

To see all files in an RPM package (for example, mysql-community-server), use the following command:

shell> rpm -qpl mysql-community-server-version-distribution-arch.rpm

The discussion in the rest of this section applies only to an installation process using the RPM packages directly downloaded from Oracle, instead of through a MySQL repository.

Dependency relationships exist among some of the packages. If you plan to install many of the packages, you may wish to download the RPM bundle tar file instead, which contains all the RPM packages listed above, so that you need not download them separately.

In most cases, you need to install the mysql-community-server, mysql-community-client, mysql-community-libs, mysql-community-common, and mysql-community-libs-compat packages to get a functional, standard MySQL installation. To perform such a standard, minimal installation, go to the folder that contains all those packages (and, preferably, no other RPM packages with similar names), and issue the following command for platforms other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux/CentOS 5:

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-{server,client,common,libs}-*  

Replace yum with zypper for SLES systems, and with dnf for dnf-enabled systems (like Fedora 23).

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux/CentOS 5 systems, there is an extra package (mysql-version-el5-arch.rpm) to be installed; use the following command:

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-{server,client,common,libs}-* mysql-5.*  

While it is much preferable to use a high-level package management tool like yum to install the packages, users who prefer direct rpm commands can replace the yum install command with the rpm -Uvh command; however, using rpm -Uvh instead makes the installation process more prone to failure, due to potential dependency issues the installation process might run into.

To install only the client programs, you can skip mysql-community-server in your list of packages to install; issue the following command for platforms other than Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux/CentOS 5:

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-{client,common,libs}-*  

Replace yum with zypper for SLES systems, and with dnf for dnf-enabled systems (like Fedora 23).

For Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Oracle Linux/CentOS 5 systems:

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-{client,common,libs}-* mysql-5.*  

A standard installation of MySQL using the RPM packages result in files and resources created under the system directories, shown in the following table.

The installation also creates a user named mysql and a group named mysql on the system.

MySQL is NOT automatically started at the end of the installation process. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Fedora systems, use the following command to start MySQL:

shell> sudo service mysqld start

For SLES systems, the command is the same, but the service name is different:

shell> sudo service mysql start

If the operating system is systemd enabled, standard service commands such as stop, start, status and restart should be used to manage the MySQL server service. The mysqld service is enabled by default, and it starts at system reboot. Notice that certain things might work differently on systemd platforms: for example, changing the location of the data directory might cause issues. See Section 2.10, “Managing MySQL Server with systemd” for additional information.

At the initial start up of the server, the following happens, given that the data directory of the server is empty:

shell> mysql -uroot -p 

mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass4!'; 

If something goes wrong during installation, you might find debug information in the error log file /var/log/mysqld.log.

For some Linux distributions, it might be necessary to increase the limit on number of file descriptors available to mysqld. See File Not Found and Similar Errors

Compatibility with RPM Packages from Other Vendors.  If you have installed packages for MySQL from your Linux distribution's local software repository, it is much preferable to install the new, directly-downloaded packages from Oracle using the package management system of your platform (yum, dnf, or zypper), as described above. The command replaces old packages with new ones to ensure compatibility of old applications with the new installation; for example, the old mysql-libs package is replaced with the mysql-community-libs-compat package, which provides a replacement-compatible client library for applications that were using your older MySQL installation. If there was an older version of mysql-community-libs-compat on the system, it also gets replaced.

If you have installed third-party packages for MySQL that are NOT from your Linux distribution's local software repository (for example, packages directly downloaded from a vendor other than Oracle), you should uninstall all those packages before installing the new, directly-downloaded packages from Oracle. This is because conflicts may arise between those vendor's RPM packages and Oracle's: for example, a vendor's convention about which files belong with the server and which belong with the client library may differ from that used for Oracle packages. Attempts to install an Oracle RPM may then result in messages saying that files in the RPM to be installed conflict with files from an installed package.

Installing Client Libraries from Multiple MySQL Versions.  It is possible to install multiple client library versions, such as for the case that you want to maintain compatibility with older applications linked against previous libraries. To install an older client library, use the --oldpackage option with rpm. For example, to install mysql-community-libs-5.5 on an EL6 system that has libmysqlclient.20 from MySQL 5.7, use a command like this:

shell> rpm --oldpackage -ivh mysql-community-libs-5.5.50-2.el6.x86_64.rpm

Debug Package.  A special variant of MySQL Server compiled with the debug package has been included in the server RPM packages. It performs debugging and memory allocation checks and produces a trace file when the server is running. To use that debug version, start MySQL with /usr/sbin/mysqld-debug, instead of starting it as a service or with /usr/sbin/mysqld. See The DBUG Package for the debug options you can use.

Rebuilding RPMs from source SRPMs.  Source code SRPM packages for MySQL are available for download. They can be used as-is to rebuild the MySQL RPMs with the standard rpmbuild tool chain.

root passwords for pre-GA releases.  For MySQL 5.7.4 and 5.7.5, the initial random root password is written to the .mysql_secret file in the directory named by the HOME environment variable. When trying to access the file, bear in mind that depending on operating system, using a command such as sudo may cause the value of HOME to refer to the home directory of the root system user . .mysql_secret is created with mode 600 to be accessible only to the system user for whom it is created. Before MySQL 5.7.4, the accounts (including root) created in the MySQL grant tables for an RPM installation initially have no passwords; after starting the server, you should assign passwords to them using the instructions in Postinstallation Setup and Testing."

Oracle provides Debian packages for installing MySQL on Debian or Debian-like Linux systems. The packages are available through two different channels:

Many Linux distributions include a version of the MySQL server, client tools, and development components in their native software repositories and can be installed with the platforms' standard package management systems. This section provides basic instructions for installing MySQL using those package management systems.

Distribution specific instructions are shown below:

The docker deployment framework supports easy installation and configuration of MySQL servers. For instructions, see https://hub.docker.com/r/mysql/mysql-server/. This page also provides extensive documentation about using MySQL under docker.

The juju deployment framework supports easy installation and configuration of MySQL servers. For instructions, see https://jujucharms.com/mysql/.

As of MySQL 5.7.6, if you install MySQL using an RPM distribution on the following Linux platforms, server startup and shutdown is managed by systemd:

To obtain systemd support if you install from a source distribution, configure the distribution using the -DWITH_SYSTEMD=1 CMake option. See MySQL Source-Configuration Options.

systemd provides automatic server startup and shutdown. It also enables manual server management using the systemctl command. For example:

systemctl {start|stop|restart|status} mysqld

Alternatively, use the service command (with the arguments reversed), which is compatible with System V systems:

service mysqld {start|stop|restart|status}

For the systemctl or service commands, if the MySQL service name is not mysqld, use the appropriate name (for example, mysql on SLES systems).

Support for systemd includes these files:

On platforms for which systemd support is installed, scripts such as mysqld_safe and the System V initialization script are not installed because they are unnecessary. For example, mysqld_safe can handle server restarts, but systemd provides the same capability, and does so in a manner consistent with management of other services rather than using an application-specific program.

As of MySQL 5.7.13, on platforms for which systemd support is installed, systemd has the capability of managing multiple MySQL instances. For details, see Configuring Multiple MySQL Instances Using systemd. Consequently, mysqld_multi and mysqld_multi.server are not installed because they are unnecessary.

[Service]
LimitNOFILE=max_open_files
PIDFile=/path/to/pid/file
Nice=nice_level
LimitCore=core_file_limit
Environment="LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/malloc/library"
Environment="TZ=time_zone_setting"

systemctl edit mysqld

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart mysqld

systemctl set-environment MYSQLD_OPTS="--general_log=1"
systemctl unset-environment MYSQLD_OPTS

systemctl restart mysqld

[mysqld@replica01]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql-replica01
socket=/var/lib/mysql-replica01/mysql.sock
port=3307
log-error=/var/log/mysqld-replica01.log
[mysqld@replica02]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql-replica02
socket=/var/lib/mysql-replica02/mysql.sock
port=3308
log-error=/var/log/mysqld-replica02.log

systemctl start mysqld@replica01
systemctl start mysqld@replica02

systemctl enable mysqld@replica01
systemctl enable mysqld@replica02

systemctl status 'mysqld@replica*'