[Installation/Migration] Mysql 5.1 with the official binaries

Many persons prefer to install MySQL from the binaries compiled with Mysql, rather than using packages (rpm, apt, ...):
As

• Installing the packages in directories of your choice, it quite difficult
• It depends on the frequency of updating those packages: Unable to test a new version
• Sometimes you want to install multiple versions and switch easily from one to another but when an update is available and that you install it how can I go, how will you revert the changes in case of problems

The alternatives are:
compiling the source code, is sometimes complicated and the result could reveal to be less performant that using the orignal source code of Mysql ...
use binaries compiled by Mysql ( the topic that we shall discuss below).


Note that this manipulation will take less than 15 minutes, and gives you a fresh installation of Mysql

Note: The following steps can make a clean install, if you want to migrate, just skip the setup steps, setting up data files, ...

Assume that:

• Installation will be in/usr/ local
• You have sufficient rights on the server
• The Unix user will be "Mysql" (existing account)

1) Retrieve binary mysql: here we take an Intel 64bit Linux server
Cd/usr/local /
> Wget http://mirrors.ircam.fr/...

2)Decompression:
> tar zxvf /usr/local/mysql-5.1.39-linux-x86_64-glibc23.tar.gz</code>

This creates the directory

> /usr/local/mysql-5.1.39-linux-x86_64-glibc2 

3) Creating symlink mysql: it suffices to repeat this step for change at a version update (upgrade) for example.

ln -s mysql-5.1.39-linux-x86_64-glibc23/ mysql

4)Rights Assignment:

Cd / usr / local / mysql 
Chown-R mysql. 
Chgrp-R mysql. 

5)Implementation of the configuration file in /etc/my.cnf: Many examples are provided with the binaries, just pick one. Here, we take the "mysql-huge" which is suitable for machines with 4GB RAM

cp support-files/my-huge.cnf /etc/my.cnf

6)Your Configuration: Edit the file the: /etc/my.cnf, and decide at least the directory that contains your data (datadir): By default, it is > /usr/local/mysql/data/

[mysqld]
user            = mysql
basedir         = /usr/local/mysql
datadir         = /mon/repertoire/mysql

7) Set uo the init.d script that will stop/relaunch Mysql (start, stop, restart, ...)

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

Then as a precaution to edit this file to the correct datadir (datadir =...)

8) Set the minimum data:

> ./scripts/mysql_install_db --datadir=(same as above) --user=mysql

This will create the directory, install the system tables, ...

9)Start mysql:

> /etc/init.d/mysql start

10)Best Practice: immediately assign the root user password! (it is empty by default)

> ./bin/mysqladmin -u root password "password"

The INSTALL-BINARY explains you all this , with variations, but the goal is the same ...

11)Tools like (mysql client, mysqldump, ...) are located in the directory /usr/local/mysql/bin :: to be able to call from anywhere, you can either add this directory to your PATH (file ~/.bashrc)
create symlinks in /usr/bin/

Finally, if you are migrating from 5.0 to Mysql 5.1, the script bin/mysql-upgrade will allow you to update the system tables (INFORMATION_SCHEMA, ...)