This section provides information about compiling MySQL Cluster on Linux and other Unix-like platforms. Building MySQL Cluster from source is similar to building the standard MySQL Server, although it differs in a few key respects discussed here. For general information about building MySQL from source, see Section 2.11, “Installing MySQL from Source”. Beginning with MySQL Cluster NDB 7.1.3, MySQL Cluster is also supported on Windows platforms, and can be built on Windows from source. For information about compiling MySQL Cluster on Windows platforms, see Section 17.2.2.2, “Compiling and Installing MySQL Cluster from Source on Windows”.

Building MySQL Cluster requires using the MySQL Cluster sources. These are available from the MySQL Cluster downloads page at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/cluster/. The archived source file should have a name similar to mysql-cluster-gpl-6.3.53.tar.gz, mysql-cluster-gpl-7.0.39.tar.gz, or mysql-cluster-gpl-7.1.28.tar.gz. You can also obtain MySQL development sources from launchpad.net. Attempting to build MySQL Cluster from standard MySQL 5.1 sources is not supported.

In addition to any other configure options you wish to use, be sure to include --with-plugins=ndbcluster, --with-plugins=max, or , or --with-plugins=max-no-innodb. Either of these options causes the binaries for the management nodes, data nodes, and other MySQL Cluster programs to be built; it also causes mysqld to be compiled with NDB storage engine support.

After you have run make && make install (or your system's equivalent), the result is similar to what is obtained by unpacking a precompiled binary to the same location. However, the layout can differ. These differences are covered in the next few paragraphs.

Prior to MySQL Cluster NDB 7.1.9, MySQL Cluster was not compatible with the InnoDB Plugin; in earlier MySQL Cluster releases, only the version of InnoDB supplied with the MySQL Server could be used. Beginning with MySQL Cluster NDB 7.1.9, you can build MySQL Cluster with InnoDB storage engine or plugin support using the appropriate --with-plugins option for configure.

Management nodes.  When building from source and running the default make install, the management server binary (ndb_mgmd) is placed in /usr/local/mysql/libexec, while the management client binary (ndb_mgm) can be found in /usr/local/mysql/bin. Only ndb_mgmd is required to be present on a management node host; however, it is also a good idea to have ndb_mgm present on the same host machine. Neither of these executables requires a specific location on the host machine's file system.

Data nodes.  The only executable required on a data node host is ndbd (mysqld, for example, does not have to be present on the host machine). By default when doing a source build, this file is placed in the directory /usr/local/mysql/libexec. For installing on multiple data node hosts, only ndbd need be copied to the other host machine or machines. (This assumes that all data node hosts use the same architecture and operating system; otherwise you may need to compile separately for each different platform.) ndbd need not be in any particular location on the host's file system, as long as the location is known.

When compiling MySQL Cluster NDB 7.0 or later from source, no special options are required for building multi-threaded data node binaries. On Unix platforms, configuring the build with any of the options --with-plugins=ndbcluster, --with-plugins=max, or --with-plugins=max-no-innodb causes ndbmtd to be built automatically; make install places the ndbmtd binary in the libexec directory along with mysqld, ndbd, and ndb_mgm.

SQL nodes.  If you compile MySQL with clustering support, and perform the default installation (using make install as the system root user), mysqld is placed in /usr/local/mysql/bin. Follow the steps given in Section 2.11, “Installing MySQL from Source” to make mysqld ready for use. If you want to run multiple SQL nodes, you can use a copy of the same mysqld executable and its associated support files on several machines. The easiest way to do this is to copy the entire /usr/local/mysql directory and all directories and files contained within it to the other SQL node host or hosts, then repeat the steps from Section 2.11, “Installing MySQL from Source” on each machine. If you configure the build with a nondefault --prefix, you need to adjust the directory accordingly.

In Section 17.2.3, “Initial Configuration of MySQL Cluster”, we create configuration files for all of the nodes in our example MySQL Cluster.