Installing MySQL

I am exploring another database storage solution “MySQL” to understand practical applications of using MySQL in our environment.

This is one of the many articles that I will be writing on MySQL. This article gives you brief steps to installing MySQL on Linux.

Nothing different than what is provided in MySQL documentation except that this is less elaborate with only required steps compared to MySQL documentation.

This is how you can do the installation:-

Step 1) Down the software from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

If you are downloading only for checking out usability and features and for personal learning – go for community version. Click on “MySQL Community Server” link.

Select the OS as “Linux – Generic”

Scroll to the bottom and you will see last 2 lines provides the option to download binaries in the form of tar.gz files – “Linux – Generic (glibc 2.5) (x86, 64-bit), Compressed TAR Archive” and “Linux – Generic (glibc 2.5) (x86, 32-bit), Compressed TAR Archive”

Depending on the hardware server you have download either 32 bit or 64 bit version

Step 2) Extract the files on server (login as root) 

Once you download the software (may be on your laptop), SCP the same to the linux server on which you want to install MySQL.

From here on you should be logged in as “root” user on your linux server

Extract the software on linux server at /usr/local location

In my case software was lying on my linux server at /home/advait/mysql location. I extracted using following commands

cd /usr/local 
tar xvfz /home/advait/mysql/mysql-5.6.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64.tar.gz

Create a new symlink “mysql” to point to extracted directory (it looks neat without version number and other details).

ln -s mysql-5.6.16-linux-glibc2.5-x86_64 mysql

Step 3) Run following steps to change ownerships

Since you want a superuser to have control of mysql and you dont want to login every time as “root” user on your server, you should be changing the ownership to the user which should be the administrator of mysql.

Usual convention suggests creating “mysql” user on your linux host and giving ownership to “mysql” user.

But on my desktop, I have a user called “advait” and I will be giving ownership to this user.

chown -R advait mysql
cd mysql
chown -R advait .
chgrp -R <grp name> .

Above <grp name> should be the group your user ID belongs to. In my case its again “advait”. To avoid confusion I have used <grp name> instead.

Step 4) Create MySQL database

you should be in /usr/local/mysql directory. Following script will create MySQL database named “mysql” and all required metadata tables inside that.

it will also create a test database for testing purpose.

scripts/mysql_install_db --user=advait

Step 5) Change permissions and create Log directory

you should be in /usr/local/mysql directory

chown -R advait data
chgrp -R <grp name> data
mkdir log
chown -R advait log
chgrp -R <grp name> log

data directory will hold data about tables and log directory will hold log files.

Step 6) Copy config file and modify

Copy my.cnf from /usr/local/mysql to /etc/

you should be in /usr/local/mysql directory

cp my.cnf /etc/my.cnf

modify following parameters in /etc/my.cnf and put them under [mysql.server] heading

[mysql.server]
log_bin = /usr/local/mysql/log
basedir = /usr/local/mysql
datadir = /usr/local/mysql/data
port = 3306
socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
user = advait
join_buffer_size = 256M
sort_buffer_size = 16M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 16M

These parameters will be used by mysql instance to during startup.

Step 7) Start MySQL instance

You should start mysql server using your user ID to which you have given the ownership. In my case “advait”.

Login as “advait” and run following commands to start MySQL instance

cd /usr/local/mysql

Use one of the following command to start MySQL instance.

bin/mysqld_safe &
support-files/mysql.server start

You can actually copy support-files/mysql.server in /etc/init.d and make MySQL instance start automatically when server starts

Step 8) Make MySQL instance start automatically with server reboot

cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql
chmod +x /etc/init.d/mysql
chkconfig --add mysql

Reference:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/installing.html

Hope this helps !!