This section provides information about compiling NDB Cluster on Linux and other Unix-like platforms. Building NDB 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 2.8, “Installing MySQL from Source”. For information about compiling NDB Cluster on Windows platforms, see Section 21.3.2.2, “Compiling and Installing NDB Cluster from Source on Windows”.

Building NDB Cluster requires using the NDB Cluster sources. These are available from the NDB Cluster downloads page at https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/cluster/. The archived source file should have a name similar to mysql-cluster-gpl-7.6.35.tar.gz. You can also obtain NDB Cluster sources from GitHub at https://github.com/mysql/mysql-server/tree/cluster-7.5 (NDB 7.5) and https://github.com/mysql/mysql-server/tree/cluster-7.6 (NDB 7.6). Building NDB Cluster 7.5 or 7.6 from standard MySQL Server 5.7 sources is not supported.

The WITH_NDBCLUSTER_STORAGE_ENGINE option for CMake causes the binaries for the management nodes, data nodes, and other NDB Cluster programs to be built; it also causes mysqld to be compiled with NDB storage engine support. This option (or its alias WITH_NDBCLUSTER) is required when building NDB Cluster.

For more information about CMake options specific to building NDB Cluster, see CMake Options for Compiling NDB Cluster.

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.

Management nodes.  When building from source and running the default make install, the management server and management client binaries (ndb_mgmd and 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 the data node binary ndbd or ndbmtd. (mysqld, for example, does not have to be present on the host machine.) By default, when building from source, this file is placed in the directory /usr/local/mysql/bin. For installing on multiple data node hosts, only ndbd or ndbmtd 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.) The data node binary need not be in any particular location on the host's file system, as long as the location is known.

When compiling NDB Cluster from source, no special options are required for building multithreaded data node binaries. Configuring the build with NDB storage engine support causes ndbmtd to be built automatically; make install places the ndbmtd binary in the installation bin 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 2.8, “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 2.8, “Installing MySQL from Source” on each machine. If you configure the build with a nondefault PREFIX option, you must adjust the directory accordingly.

In Section 21.3.3, “Initial Configuration of NDB Cluster”, we create configuration files for all of the nodes in our example NDB Cluster.