Keyring service consumers require that a keyring plugin be installed. This section describes how to install the keyring plugin of your choosing. Also, for general information about installing plugins, see Section 5.5.1, “Installing and Uninstalling Plugins”.

If you intend to use keyring functions in conjunction with the chosen keyring plugin, install the functions after installing that plugin, using the instructions in Section 6.4.4.8, “General-Purpose Keyring Key-Management Functions”.

MySQL provides these keyring plugin choices:

To be usable by the server, the plugin library file must be located in the MySQL plugin directory (the directory named by the plugin_dir system variable). If necessary, configure the plugin directory location by setting the value of plugin_dir at server startup.

The keyring plugin must be loaded early during the server startup sequence so that components can access it as necessary during their own initialization. For example, the InnoDB storage engine uses the keyring for tablespace encryption, so the keyring plugin must be loaded and available prior to InnoDB initialization.

Installation for each keyring plugin is similar. The following instructions describe how to install keyring_file. To use a different keyring plugin, substitute its name for keyring_file.

The keyring_file plugin library file base name is keyring_file. The file name suffix differs per platform (for example, .so for Unix and Unix-like systems, .dll for Windows).

To load the plugin, use the --early-plugin-load option to name the plugin library file that contains it. For example, on platforms where the plugin library file suffix is .so, use these lines in the server my.cnf file, adjusting the .so suffix for your platform as necessary:

[mysqld]
early-plugin-load=keyring_file.so

Before starting the server, check the notes for your chosen keyring plugin for configuration instructions specific to that plugin:

After performing any plugin-specific configuration, start the server. Verify plugin installation by examining the Information Schema PLUGINS table or use the SHOW PLUGINS statement (see Section 5.5.2, “Obtaining Server Plugin Information”). For example:

mysql> SELECT PLUGIN_NAME, PLUGIN_STATUS
       FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PLUGINS
       WHERE PLUGIN_NAME LIKE 'keyring%';
+--------------+---------------+
| PLUGIN_NAME  | PLUGIN_STATUS |
+--------------+---------------+
| keyring_file | ACTIVE        |
+--------------+---------------+

If the plugin fails to initialize, check the server error log for diagnostic messages.

Plugins can be loaded by methods other than --early-plugin-load, such as the --plugin-load or --plugin-load-add option or the INSTALL PLUGIN statement. However, keyring plugins loaded using those methods may be available too late in the server startup sequence for certain components that use the keyring, such as InnoDB:

If no keyring plugin is available when a component tries to access the keyring service, the service cannot be used by that component. As a result, the component may fail to initialize or may initialize with limited functionality. For example, if InnoDB finds that there are encrypted tablespaces when it initializes, it attempts to access the keyring. If the keyring is unavailable, InnoDB can access only unencrypted tablespaces. To ensure that InnoDB can access encrypted tablespaces as well, use --early-plugin-load to load the keyring plugin.