2.5 Installing MySQL on Linux Using RPM Packages from Oracle

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:

• From the MySQL software repositories:

  • The MySQL Yum repository (see Section 2.1, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL Yum Repository” for details).

  • The MySQL SLES repository (see Section 2.4, “Installing MySQL on Linux Using the MySQL SLES Repository” for details).

• From the Download MySQL Community Server page in the MySQL Developer Zone.

Note

RPM distributions of MySQL are also provided by other vendors. Be aware that they may differ from those built by Oracle in features, capabilities, and conventions (including communication setup), and that the installation instructions in this manual do not necessarily apply to them. The vendor's instructions should be consulted instead.

If you have such a third-party distribution of MySQL running on your system and now want to migrate to Oracle's distribution using the RPM packages downloaded from the MySQL Developer Zone, see Compatibility with RPM Packages from Other Vendors below. The preferred method of migration, however, is to use the MySQL Yum repository or MySQL SLES repository.

RPM packages for MySQL are listed in the following tables:

Table 2.2 RPM Packages for MySQL Community Edition

Package Name	Summary
mysql-community-server	Database server and related tools
mysql-community-client	MySQL client applications and tools
mysql-community-common	Common files for server and client libraries
mysql-community-devel	Development header files and libraries for MySQL database client applications
mysql-community-libs	Shared libraries for MySQL database client applications
mysql-community-libs-compat	Shared compatibility libraries for previous MySQL installations
mysql-community-embedded	MySQL embedded library
mysql-community-embedded-devel	Development header files and libraries for MySQL as an embeddable library
mysql-community-test	Test suite for the MySQL server

Table 2.3 RPM Packages for the MySQL Enterprise Edition

Package Name	Summary
mysql-commercial-server	Database server and related tools
mysql-commercial-client	MySQL client applications and tools
mysql-commercial-common	Common files for server and client libraries
mysql-commercial-devel	Development header files and libraries for MySQL database client applications
mysql-commercial-libs	Shared libraries for MySQL database client applications
mysql-commercial-libs-compat	Shared compatibility libraries for previous MySQL installations
mysql-commercial-embedded	MySQL embedded library
mysql-commercial-embedded-devel	Development header files and libraries for MySQL as an embeddable library
mysql-commercial-test	Test suite for the MySQL server

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:

Table 2.4 MySQL Linux RPM Package Distribution Identifiers

distribution Value	Intended Use
el{version} where {version} is the major Enterprise Linux version, such as el8	EL6 (8.0), EL7, EL8, and EL9-based platforms (for example, the corresponding versions of Oracle Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and CentOS)
sles12	SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

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

$> 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, basic 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:

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

Replace yum with zypper for SLES.

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

$> 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:

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

Replace yum with zypper for SLES.

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

$> 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.

Table 2.5 MySQL Installation Layout for Linux RPM Packages from the MySQL Developer Zone

Files or Resources	Location
Client programs and scripts	/usr/bin
mysqld server	/usr/sbin
Configuration file	/etc/my.cnf
Data directory	/var/lib/mysql
Error log file	For RHEL, Oracle Linux, CentOS or Fedora platforms: /var/log/mysqld.log For SLES: /var/log/mysql/mysqld.log
Value of secure_file_priv	/var/lib/mysql-files
System V init script	For RHEL, Oracle Linux, CentOS or Fedora platforms: /etc/init.d/mysqld For SLES: /etc/init.d/mysql
Systemd service	For RHEL, Oracle Linux, CentOS or Fedora platforms: mysqld For SLES: mysql
Pid file	/var/run/mysql/mysqld.pid
Socket	/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
Keyring directory	/var/lib/mysql-keyring
Unix manual pages	/usr/share/man
Include (header) files	/usr/include/mysql
Libraries	/usr/lib/mysql
Miscellaneous support files (for example, error messages, and character set files)	/usr/share/mysql

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

Notes

• The mysql user is created using the -r and -s /bin/false options of the useradd command, so that it does not have login permissions to your server host (see Creating the mysql User and Group for details). To switch to the mysql user on your OS, use the --shell=/bin/bash option for the su command:

  su - mysql --shell=/bin/bash

• Installation of previous versions of MySQL using older packages might have created a configuration file named /usr/my.cnf. It is highly recommended that you examine the contents of the file and migrate the desired settings inside to the file /etc/my.cnf file, then remove /usr/my.cnf.

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:

$> sudo service mysqld start

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

$> 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.

During an upgrade installation using RPM and DEB packages, if the MySQL server is running when the upgrade occurs then the MySQL server is stopped, the upgrade occurs, and the MySQL server is restarted. One exception: if the edition also changes during an upgrade (such as community to commercial, or vice-versa), then MySQL server is not restarted.

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

• The server is initialized.

• An SSL certificate and key files are generated in the data directory.

• validate_password is installed and enabled.

• A superuser account 'root'@'localhost' is created. A password for the superuser is set and stored in the error log file. To reveal it, use the following command for RHEL, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Fedora systems:

  $> sudo grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log

  Use the following command for SLES systems:

  $> sudo grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysql/mysqld.log

  The next step is to log in with the generated, temporary password and set a custom password for the superuser account:

$> mysql -uroot -p

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

Note

validate_password is installed by default. The default password policy implemented by validate_password requires that passwords contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one digit, and one special character, and that the total password length is at least 8 characters.

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:

$> 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.

Note

The default plugin directory for debug builds changed from /usr/lib64/mysql/plugin to /usr/lib64/mysql/plugin/debug in 5.7.21. Previously, it was necessary to change plugin_dir to /usr/lib64/mysql/plugin/debug for debug builds.

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."