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MySQL 5.4 Reference Manual :: 2 Installing and Upgrading MySQL :: 2.9 Installing MySQL from tar.gz Packages on Other Unix-Like Systems
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2.9. Installing MySQL from tar.gz Packages on Other Unix-Like Systems

This section covers the installation of MySQL binary distributions that are provided for various platforms in the form of compressed tar files (files with a .tar.gz extension). See Section 2.1.2.4, “MySQL Binaries Compiled by Oracle Corporation”, for a detailed list.

To obtain MySQL, see Section 2.1.3, “How to Get MySQL”.

MySQL tar file binary distributions have names of the form mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz, where VERSION is a number (for example, 5.4.3), and OS indicates the type of operating system for which the distribution is intended (for example, pc-linux-i686).

In addition to these generic packages, we also offer binaries in platform-specific package formats for selected platforms. See Section 2.2, “Standard MySQL Installation Using a Binary Distribution”, for more information on how to install these.

You need the following tools to install a MySQL tar file binary distribution:

  • GNU gunzip to uncompress the distribution.

  • A reasonable tar to unpack the distribution. GNU tar is known to work. Some operating systems come with a preinstalled version of tar that is known to have problems. For example, the tar provided with early versions of Mac OS X, SunOS 4.x, Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris, and HP-UX are known to have problems with long file names. On Mac OS X, you can use the preinstalled gnutar program. On Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris you can use the preinstalled gtar. On other systems with a deficient tar, you should install GNU tar first.

If you run into problems and need to file a bug report, please use the instructions in Section 1.7, “How to Report Bugs or Problems”.

The basic commands that you must execute to install and use a MySQL binary distribution are: 

shell> groupadd mysql
shell> useradd -g mysql mysql
shell> cd /usr/local
shell> gunzip < /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz | tar xvf -
shell> ln -s full-path-to-mysql-VERSION-OS mysql
shell> cd mysql
shell> chown -R mysql .
shell> chgrp -R mysql .
shell> scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
shell> chown -R root .
shell> chown -R mysql data
shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

Note

This procedure does not set up any passwords for MySQL accounts. After following the procedure, proceed to Section 2.11, “Post-Installation Setup and Testing”.

A more detailed version of the preceding description for installing a binary distribution follows:

  1. Add a login user and group for mysqld to run as: 

    shell> groupadd mysql
shell> useradd -g mysql mysql

    These commands add the mysql group and the mysql user. The syntax for useradd and groupadd may differ slightly on different versions of Unix, or they may have different names such as adduser and addgroup.

    You might want to call the user and group something else instead of mysql. If so, substitute the appropriate name in the following steps.

  2. Pick the directory under which you want to unpack the distribution and change location into it. In the following example, we unpack the distribution under /usr/local. (The instructions, therefore, assume that you have permission to create files and directories in /usr/local. If that directory is protected, you must perform the installation as root.) 

    shell> cd /usr/local

  3. Obtain a distribution file using the instructions in Section 2.1.3, “How to Get MySQL”. For a given release, binary distributions for all platforms are built from the same MySQL source distribution.

  4. Unpack the distribution, which creates the installation directory. Then create a symbolic link to that directory: 

    shell> gunzip < /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz | tar xvf -
shell> ln -s full-path-to-mysql-VERSION-OS mysql

    The tar command creates a directory named mysql-VERSION-OS. The ln command makes a symbolic link to that directory. This lets you refer more easily to the installation directory as /usr/local/mysql.

    With GNU tar, no separate invocation of gunzip is necessary. You can replace the first line with the following alternative command to uncompress and extract the distribution: 

    shell> tar zxvf /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz

  5. Change location into the installation directory: 

    shell> cd mysql

    You will find several files and subdirectories in the mysql directory. The most important for installation purposes are the bin and scripts subdirectories:

    • The bin directory contains client programs and the server. You should add the full path name of this directory to your PATH environment variable so that your shell finds the MySQL programs properly. See Section 2.14, “Environment Variables”.

    • The scripts directory contains the mysql_install_db script used to initialize the mysql database containing the grant tables that store the server access permissions.

  6. Ensure that the distribution contents are accessible to mysql. If you unpacked the distribution as mysql, no further action is required. If you unpacked the distribution as root, its contents will be owned by root. Change its ownership to mysql by executing the following commands as root in the installation directory: 

    shell> chown -R mysql .
shell> chgrp -R mysql .

    The first command changes the owner attribute of the files to the mysql user. The second changes the group attribute to the mysql group.

  7. If you have not installed MySQL before, you must create the MySQL data directory and initialize the grant tables: 

    shell> scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

    If you run the command as root, include the --user option as shown. If you run the command while logged in as that user, you can omit the --user option.

    The command should create the data directory and its contents with mysql as the owner.

    After creating or updating the grant tables, you need to restart the server manually.

  8. Most of the MySQL installation can be owned by root if you like. The exception is that the data directory must be owned by mysql. To accomplish this, run the following commands as root in the installation directory: 

    shell> chown -R root .
shell> chown -R mysql data

  9. If you want MySQL to start automatically when you boot your machine, you can copy support-files/mysql.server to the location where your system has its startup files. More information can be found in the support-files/mysql.server script itself and in Section 2.11.2.2, “Starting and Stopping MySQL Automatically”.

  10. You can set up new accounts using the bin/mysql_setpermission script if you install the DBI and DBD::mysql Perl modules. See Section 4.6.13, “mysql_setpermission — Interactively Set Permissions in Grant Tables”. For Perl module installation instructions, see Section 2.15, “Perl Installation Notes”.

  11. If you would like to use mysqlaccess and have the MySQL distribution in some nonstandard location, you must change the location where mysqlaccess expects to find the mysql client. Edit the bin/mysqlaccess script at approximately line 18. Search for a line that looks like this: 

    $MYSQL     = '/usr/local/bin/mysql';    # path to mysql executable

    Change the path to reflect the location where mysql actually is stored on your system. If you do not do this, a Broken pipe error will occur when you run mysqlaccess.

After everything has been unpacked and installed, you should test your distribution. To start the MySQL server, use the following command: 

shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

If you run the command as root, you must use the --user option as shown. The value of the option is the name of the login account that you created in the first step to use for running the server. If you run the command while logged in as mysql, you can omit the --user option.

If the command fails immediately and prints mysqld ended, you can find some information in the host_name.err file in the data directory.

More information about mysqld_safe is given in Section 4.3.2, “mysqld_safe — MySQL Server Startup Script”.

Note

The accounts that are listed in the MySQL grant tables initially have no passwords. After starting the server, you should set up passwords for them using the instructions in Section 2.11, “Post-Installation Setup and Testing”.


User Comments

Posted by Erik Svensson on November 26 2004 9:03am[Delete] [Edit]

After setting the group to 'mysql', check that the group has write privileges to the directories.
Otherwise do a 'chmod g+w data'

Posted by Scott Park on November 29 2004 8:18am[Delete] [Edit]

In my experience with FreeBSD the groupadd and addgroup commands are not available. Instead you must use the ps utility to add users and groups. Below is the method I used:

pw groupadd mysql
pw useradd mysql
pw groupmod mysql -M mysql
pw groupshow mysql

More info can be found on the FreeBSD website:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users-groups.html

Posted by Wole Akpose on August 12 2008 12:23am[Delete] [Edit]

To Install MYSQL SERVER on FreeBSD (using port collection) you will have to do the following

cd /usr/ports/databases/mysqlxx-server (xx is server verison)

make install clean (this installs and clean up after you)

cp /usr/local/share/mysql/abc.cnf /etc/my.cnf (abc is your choice of configuration file. options include my-huge, my-large, my-medium, my-small)

cp /usr/local/share/mysql/mysql.server /etc/rc.d/mysql.server

now you may install the db using :

mysql_intsall_db --user=mysql

verify that the mysql db in /var/db/mysql have the right user and group ownership (owner/group should be mysql)

If note just change the owner/group setting for the folder and sub-folders and files /var/db/mysql

You can now start the deamon
mysql_safe &

don't forget to change mysql admin password and imo also restrict admin user access only to local machine.

NOTE : You can change the location of the db file by including the directory switch in your mysql_install_db command (--basedir=path). You can also choose a different user to run your mysql daemon.

For fresh FreeBSD command you will notice that you need to use the full path to the executables : /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe

Posted by [name withheld] on April 21 2006 3:54pm[Delete] [Edit]

Wole Akpose's post was indispensable for a newbie like me installing mysql5 on FreeBSD. I installed on FreeBSD 6.0. Here are a few additional items to note on his post:

1) A minor typo... "mysql_install_db" not "mysql_intsall_db"

2) Per his instructions, I did have to chgrp my /var/db/mysql files (chgrp -R mysql /var/db/mysql)

3) I'm assuming there's something wrong with my setup, since plain old "mysql_safe &" doesn't work for me. Instead I have to use this "cd /var/db/mysql ; /usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe &"

4) For reasons unknown to me, mysql doesn't start automatically on reboot. So I placed an sh file in /etc/rc.d that simply contains the mysql_safe call. (FYI, I do have mysql.server file in place)

Posted by Wole Akpose on May 19 2006 12:24am[Delete] [Edit]

Sorry about the typos. Thanks for the corrections.

mysqld_safe is the correct command.

Note that you can also either create a script that simply repeat these processes or update your make file to take these actions automatically.

If you have to install for multiple machines, a script is the way to go

Posted by Todd Smeed on August 12 2006 5:23am[Delete] [Edit]

While running FC3, I was not able to start the Mysql service until I manually created /var/run/mysqld/ for the PID file.

mkdir /var/run/mysqld
chown -R /var/run/mysqld mysqld
chgrp -R /var/run/mysqld mysqld

Posted by girishb b on December 3 2007 11:11am[Delete] [Edit]

mysql binary installation:---

In Fedora core 8 to start mysql service manually we need to create mysqld folder in /var/run and set permission as shown below

# groupadd mysqld
# useradd –g mysqld mysqld
# mkdir /var/run/msqld
# chown –R /var/run/mysqld mysqld
# chmod 770 /var/run/mysqld

Posted by Chris Pizzi on January 28 2008 8:25pm[Delete] [Edit]

I'm using Ubuntu 7.10 with the MySQL 5.1.22 .tar.gz binary distribution. I needed to add --no-defaults to the ./scripts/mysql_install_db for it to work properly.

Posted by sathya kothandram on May 14 2008 2:44pm[Delete] [Edit]

I am on linux-mint 4.0, which is basically Ubuntu 7. I would like to reiterate that without the --no-defaults option the mysql_install_db will not run correctly.

Posted by Rafal Somla on May 15 2008 5:48pm[Delete] [Edit]

Note that if you install to a location different than /usr/local (or other standard location) then you must ensure that the libraries form <base_dir>/lib/mysql are found by the dynamic linker.

On my linux I achieved that by appending <base_dir>/lib/mysql to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. I also had to export the variable with

$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

An alternative is to add the mysql library dir to the set of standard library paths using ldconfig.

Posted by Gustavo Delfino on September 26 2008 1:50pm[Delete] [Edit]

For PowerPC Mac OS X 10.5 the only download available is in .tar.gz format. The instructions here for this kind on install do not apply to Mac OS X because the groupadd command does not exists on Leopard.

Can anyone post an updated install procedure?

Posted by Ed Eaglehouse on March 27 2009 7:49pm[Delete] [Edit]

For my installation of version 5.1.32, step 7 requires an additional piece of information. When I ran the installation script to create the db tables, I had to specify my data directory using the --datadir= option. If I didn't, the daemon would fail with the following error:

<i>090327 15:04:12 [ERROR] Can't open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it.</i>

After I did, I was able to start the daemon and run the upgrade script to create the plugin and host tables.

Posted by Vasiliy Smagin on October 17 2009 3:03am[Delete] [Edit]

Posted by sathya kothandram on May 14 2008 2:44pm [Delete] [Edit]

I am on linux-mint 4.0, which is basically Ubuntu 7. I would like to reiterate that without the --no-defaults option the mysql_install_db will not run correctly.

It really works thank you)

Posted by Abhay Thakur on November 2 2009 8:17am[Delete] [Edit]

Here there are two commands missing which are:

shell> cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf

#comment this would copy the desired config you want to /etc as my.cnf


shell> cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/

#comment this would copy the daemon for mysqld to init.d to be initialize it.

to start the mysqld

shell>/etc/init.d/mysql.server start

Posted by Abhay Thakur on November 2 2009 9:04am[Delete] [Edit]

If you have previously installed the mysl using the apt command eg. sudo apt-get install mysql-server 5.0
you will have problem installing through binaries ...
make sure that you have deleted the mysql folder manually from /etc before installing using the binaries!!!!!

shell>rm -rf /etc/mysql

this is coz after you install using the binaries it would create the my.cnf file in /etc
and there would be another my.cnf file in the /etc/mysql folder....

TO REMOVE BINARIES!
all you have to do is
shell>rm -r /usr/local/mysql-version-os
shell> rm -r /mysql #comment the symbolic link


HOPE THIS WILL HELP...
coz i wasted 3 days coz i have previously installed using the apt-get and then installed using the binaries!

use the sudo su - or sudo if you cant copy or remove

Posted by Nicholas Reed on January 22 2010 4:59am[Delete] [Edit]

For unexperienced Mac OS X 10.5 users like myself who are installing from the tar binary:

- if you have OS X 10.5 or later, there is already a mysql user/group, so you don't need to create them
- most commands need to be executed with sudo
- you can't start the server in the background straight-off, you have to start it in the foreground, suspend it, then background it:

> sudo mysqld_safe
(ctrl-z)
> bg

Posted by Tomer Silverman on March 8 2010 9:31am[Delete] [Edit]

I installed generic binaries (5.1.42) for ,Mandriva 2010.01 based on these instructions.

Few tips: If you use 'useradd mysql' like in this example - you get an account with which you can log in to KDE and has a '/usr/home/mysql' directory. You would also see it in the login splash. You need to do 'useradd -r mysql' so no home directory and account are created. The same for groupadd. Use the '-r' flag so the group gets a group id lower than 500 to be considered a system group.

No matter what I did I could not run the scripts in the $MYSQL_HOME/scripts or $MYSQL_HOME/bin with any other user than root. No 'chmode' command seemed to help. You have to perform the installation with the root account (e.g. su) plus to use the '--user=root' flag in every installation script.

I used the '/usr/local' dir to place the installation but I have a data partition under '/data' where I wanted all my large files to reside. I used the '--datadir=/data' flag to tell mysql where the db files will reside.

I could not set mysql to start automatically using the instructions here. I did the '/etc/init.d' linking, like it says here - but when I tried to run '/etc/init.d/mysql.server start' I got a permission error.

This was a show-stopper for me so I tried a different approach. I used 'urpmi mysql' to install the mysql package. This got me up and running plus auto-starting mysql in under 2 minutes.

Then, I checked how the installer configured the '/etc/init.d' linking and found out the links are totally different than what it says here. The installer also places the main mysql installation under '/var/lib'.

Then, in the '/etc/my.cfg' file - I changed the 'datadir' property to my own path '/data'. When I ran the '/etc/init.d/mysqld start' command, mysql complained about the /data/mysql' directory not existing, but, it created it, nonetheless, and continued flawlessly. It never complained about anything since. I recommend the 'urpmi mysql' apparoach which saves a lot of time.

BTW: The akonadi server uses a pre-existing mysql database. I had akonadi removed and manually deleted the default db because the 'urpmi' utility complained about a clash with the existing mysql-core package version which seems to be lower than the current mysql package needs. After installing the current mysql package version (5.1.42), I reinstalled akonadi and configured it to use my new mysql db. For this I used the desktop configuration tool advanced options (KDE). I worked fine with KDE without akonadi for a few days anyway. I'm not sure what's the use of akonadi on a single user laptop like mine.


Posted by Tony Amoyal on April 13 2010 3:04pm[Delete] [Edit]

Here is a consolidated tutorial with the exact commands I used to install MySQL on Mac OS X 10.6 from a binary distribution - http://www.tonyamoyal.com/2010/04/13/install-mysql-on-mac-os-x-10-6-and-add-startupitem/

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