[2024-feb-29] Sad news: Eric Layton aka Nocturnal Slacker aka vtel57 passed away on Feb 26th, shortly after hospitalization. He was one of our Wiki's most prominent admins. He will be missed.

Welcome to the Slackware Documentation Project

This is an old revision of the document!


Install MySQL On Slackware

Install MySQL

Install MySQL from the official Slackware discs or using slackpkg.

Configure MySQL

1) Create the needed database(s) and set their permissions properly

As root, run:

root@darkstar# mysql_install_db --user=mysql

User specified by –user will own database files, so it's important to set right user here, otherwise MySQL won't be able to write to database. By default MySQL in Slackware runs as user “mysql”, so it's the safe choice.

2) Enable execution of rc script to start MySQL automatically on boot

This is optional.

root@darkstar# chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld
3) Enable networking if needed

Networking is disabled by default to improve security. If you want to allow network connections, comment out this line in /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld

rc.mysqld
#SKIP="--skip-networking"
4) Start mysqld
root@darkstar# /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld start
Now you have a choice : Manual Install or Automatic
AUTOMATIC
5) 6) 7) Run the following, answer the questions
root@darkstar# /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Initial root password is “” so, just hit ENTER

MANUAL
5) Set a password for MySQL's root password
root@darkstar# mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password-here'

If you enabled networking, you should also run this command:

root@darkstar# mysqladmin -u root -h 'your-hostname' password 'new-password'
Check the mysql_install_db results, these commands are printed, you can copy/paste them. The hostname will already be replaced by yours.
6) Connect to your MySQL server
user@darkstar$ mysql -u root -p
7) For security reasons you should delete the anonymous user

For the localhost server:

mysql> use mysql
mysql> SELECT user, host FROM user;
mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE host='localhost' AND user='';

If you enabled networking, you should run this command instead:

mysql> use mysql
mysql> SELECT user, host FROM user;
mysql> DELETE FROM user WHERE user='';
Finish set configfile
  • Go to /etc/mysql folder, and choose config, who you prefer ( for simple variants without heavy mysql load,if you have 2+ Gb RAM, i recommend my-large.cnf) and copy it to \ as /etc/my.cnf.
  • Edit /etc/my.cnf adding these lines after [mysqld]:
[mysqld]
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8

This gives you full utf8 on your mysql server, after restart it. More on this described there:http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3513773/change-mysql-default-character-set-to-utf8-in-my-cnf

Troubleshooting

  • Server start errors can be seen in the error log that is located by default at /var/lib/mysql/<hostname>.err. Another option is to run the server directly and direct the output to the console (use Ctrl+\ to stop the server). Run:
root@darkstar# /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --console
  • Resetting the root password can be done by creating a new cnf file and add the following lines (please change the password in this example):
mysql_new.cnf
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') WHERE USER='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Save this file (any name would do) and start the server with the –init-file argument:

root@darkstar# /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --defaults-file="new_cnf_file.cnf"

Sources

 howtos:databases:install_mysql_on_slackware ()