AIX 4.x, 5.x with native threads. See Section 2.7, “Installing MySQL on IBM AIX”. AIX 5.3 should be upgraded to technology level 7 (5300-07).

FreeBSD 5.x and up with native threads. See Section 2.9, “Installing MySQL on FreeBSD”.

HP-UX 11.x with the native threads. See Section 2.8, “Installing MySQL on HP-UX”.

Linux, builds on all fairly recent Linux distributions with glibc 2.3. See Section 2.5, “Installing MySQL on Linux”.

Mac OS X. See Section 2.4, “Installing MySQL on Mac OS X”.

Solaris 2.8 on SPARC and x86, including support for native threads. See Section 2.6, “Installing MySQL on Solaris and OpenSolaris”.

Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. See Section 2.3, “Installing MySQL on Microsoft Windows”.

General stability of the thread library. A platform may have an excellent reputation otherwise, but MySQL is only as stable as the thread library it calls, even if everything else is perfect.

The capability of the kernel and the thread library to take advantage of symmetric multi-processor (SMP) systems. In other words, when a process creates a thread, it should be possible for that thread to run on a CPU different from the original process.

The capability of the kernel and the thread library to run many threads that acquire and release a mutex over a short critical region frequently without excessive context switches. If the implementation of pthread_mutex_lock() is too anxious to yield CPU time, this hurts MySQL tremendously. If this issue is not taken care of, adding extra CPUs actually makes MySQL slower.

General file system stability and performance.

Table size. If your tables are large, performance is affected by the ability of the file system to deal with large files and dealing with them efficiently.

Our level of expertise here at Oracle Corporation with the platform. If we know a platform well, we enable platform-specific optimizations and fixes at compile time. We can also provide advice on configuring your system optimally for MySQL.

The amount of testing we have done internally for similar configurations.

The number of users that have run MySQL successfully on the platform in similar configurations. If this number is high, the likelihood of encountering platform-specific surprises is much smaller.

MD5 checksums

Cryptographic signatures using GnuPG, the GNU Privacy Guard

For RPM packages, the built-in RPM integrity verification mechanism

Section 2.3.1, “MySQL Installation Layout on Microsoft Windows”

Section 2.11.1, “MySQL Layout for Source Installation”

Table 2.2, “MySQL Installation Layout for Generic Unix/Linux Binary Package”

Table 2.11, “MySQL Installation Layout for Linux RPM”

Table 2.8, “MySQL Installation Layout on Mac OS X”

SSL support is not included.

The Essentials Package: This package has a file name similar to mysql-essential-5.5.8-win32.msi and contains the minimum set of files needed to install MySQL on Windows, including the Configuration Wizard. This package does not include optional components such as the embedded server and benchmark suite.

The Complete Package: This package has a file name similar to mysql-5.5.8-win32.zip and contains all files needed for a complete Windows installation, including the Configuration Wizard. This package includes optional components such as the embedded server and benchmark suite.

The Noinstall Archive: This package has a file name similar to mysql-noinstall-5.5.8-win32.zip and contains all the files found in the Complete install package, with the exception of the Configuration Wizard. This package does not include an automated installer, and must be manually installed and configured.

For information on installing using the GUI MSI installer process, see Section 2.3.3.1, “Using the MySQL Installation Wizard”.

For information on installing using the command line using the MSI package, see Section 2.3.3.2, “Automating MySQL Installation on Microsoft Windows using the MSI Package”.

If you have previously installed MySQL using the MSI package and want to remove MySQL, see Section 2.3.3.3, “Removing MySQL When Installed from the MSI Package”.

If the MySQL server cannot find the mysql privileges database or other critical files, you may see these messages:

System error 1067 has occurred.
Fatal error: Can't open privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist

These messages often occur when the MySQL base or data directories are installed in different locations than the default locations (C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5 and C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\data, respectively).

This situation may occur when MySQL is upgraded and installed to a new location, but the configuration file is not updated to reflect the new location. In addition, there may be old and new configuration files that conflict. Be sure to delete or rename any old configuration files when upgrading MySQL.

If you have installed MySQL to a directory other than C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5, you need to ensure that the MySQL server is aware of this through the use of a configuration (my.ini) file. The my.ini file needs to be located in your Windows directory, typically C:\WINDOWS. You can determine its exact location from the value of the WINDIR environment variable by issuing the following command from the command prompt:

C:\> echo %WINDIR%

An option file can be created and modified with any text editor, such as Notepad. For example, if MySQL is installed in E:\mysql and the data directory is D:\MySQLdata, you can create the option file and set up a [mysqld] section to specify values for the basedir and datadir options:

[mysqld]
# set basedir to your installation path
basedir=E:/mysql
# set datadir to the location of your data directory
datadir=D:/MySQLdata

Note that Windows path names are specified in option files using (forward) slashes rather than backslashes. If you do use backslashes, double them:

[mysqld]
# set basedir to your installation path
basedir=C:\\Program Files\\MySQL\\MySQL Server 5.5
# set datadir to the location of your data directory
datadir=D:\\MySQLdata

The rules for use of backslash in option file values are given in Section 4.2.3.3, “Using Option Files”.

If you change the datadir value in your MySQL configuration file, you must move the contents of the existing MySQL data directory before restarting the MySQL server.

See Section 2.3.5.2, “Creating an Option File”.

If you reinstall or upgrade MySQL without first stopping and removing the existing MySQL service and install MySQL using the MySQL Configuration Wizard, you may see this error:

Error: Cannot create Windows service for MySql. Error: 0

This occurs when the Configuration Wizard tries to install the service and finds an existing service with the same name.

One solution to this problem is to choose a service name other than mysql when using the configuration wizard. This enables the new service to be installed correctly, but leaves the outdated service in place. Although this is harmless, it is best to remove old services that are no longer in use.

To permanently remove the old mysql service, execute the following command as a user with administrative privileges, on the command-line:

C:\> sc delete mysql
[SC] DeleteService SUCCESS

If the sc utility is not available for your version of Windows, download the delsrv utility from http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/tools/existing/delsrv-o.asp and use the delsrv mysql syntax.

Windows 2000, Windows XP, or newer version.

Windows Vista is supported when using Visual Studio 2005 provided you have installed the following updates:

CMake, which can be downloaded from http://www.cmake.org. After installing, modify your path to include the cmake binary.

Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, Visual Studio .Net 2003 (7.1), or Visual Studio 2005 (8.0) compiler system.

If you are using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, you must also install an appropriate Platform SDK. More information and links to downloads for various Windows platforms is available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0baf2b35-c656-4969-ace8-e4c0c0716adb.

If you are compiling from a Bazaar tree or making changes to the parser, you need bison for Windows, which can be downloaded from http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/bison.htm. Download the package labeled “Complete package, excluding sources”. After installing the package, modify your path to include the bison binary and ensure that this binary is accessible from Visual Studio.

Cygwin might be necessary if you want to run the test script or package the compiled binaries and support files into a Zip archive. (Cygwin is needed only to test or package the distribution, not to build it.) Cygwin is available from http://cygwin.com.

3GB to 5GB of disk space.

Obtain a source distribution packaged by Oracle Corporation. These are available from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/.

Package a source distribution yourself from the latest Bazaar developer source tree. For instructions on pulling the latest source files, see Section 2.11.4, “Installing from the Development Source Tree”.

The default location for the MySQL Unix socket is different on Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server depending on the installation type you chose. The following table shows the default locations by installation type.

To prevent issues, you should either change the configuration of the socket used within your application (for example, changing php.ini), or you should configure the socket location using a MySQL configuration file and the socket option. For more information, see Section 5.1.2, “Server Command Options”.

You may need (or want) to create a specific mysql user to own the MySQL directory and data. On Mac OS X 10.4 and lower you can do this by using the Netinfo Manager application, located within the Utilities folder within the Applications folder. On Mac OS X 10.5 and later you can do this through the Directory Utility. From Mac OS X 10.5 and later (including Mac OS X Server 10.5) the mysql should already exist. For use in single user mode, an entry for _mysql (note the underscore prefix) should already exist within the system /etc/passwd file.

Due to a bug in the Mac OS X package installer, you may see this error message in the destination disk selection dialog:

You cannot install this software on this disk. (null)

If this error occurs, click the Go Back button once to return to the previous screen. Then click Continue to advance to the destination disk selection again, and you should be able to choose the destination disk correctly. We have reported this bug to Apple and it is investigating this problem.

Because the MySQL package installer installs the MySQL contents into a version and platform specific directory, you can use this to upgrade and migrate your database between versions. You will need to either copy the data directory from the old version to the new version, or alternatively specify an alternative datadir value to set location of the data directory.

You might want to add aliases to your shell's resource file to make it easier to access commonly used programs such as mysql and mysqladmin from the command line. The syntax for bash is:

alias mysql=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql
alias mysqladmin=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin

For tcsh, use:

alias mysql /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql
alias mysqladmin /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin

Even better, add /usr/local/mysql/bin to your PATH environment variable. You can do this by modifying the appropriate startup file for your shell. For more information, see Section 4.2.1, “Invoking MySQL Programs”.

After you have copied over the MySQL database files from the previous installation and have successfully started the new server, you should consider removing the old installation files to save disk space. Additionally, you should also remove older versions of the Package Receipt directories located in /Library/Receipts/mysql-VERSION.pkg.

To start MySQL using the preference pane:

Click Start MySQL Server. You may be prompted for the username and password of a user with administrator privileges to start the MySQL server.

To stop MySQL using the preference pane:

Click Stop MySQL Server. You may be prompted for the username and password of a user with administrator privileges to stop the MySQL server.

To automatically start the MySQL server when the system boots:

Check the checkbox next to Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup.

To disable automatic MySQL server startup when the system boots:

Uncheck the checkbox next to Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup.

For more information on managing the bundled MySQL instance in Mac OS X Server 10.5, see Mac OS X Server: Web Technologies Administration For Version 10.5 Leopard.

For more information on managing the bundled MySQL instance in Mac OS X Server 10.6, see Mac OS X Server: Web Technologies Administration Version 10.6 Snow Leopard.

The MySQL server bundled with Mac OS X Server does not include the MySQL client libraries and header files required to access and use MySQL from a third-party driver, such as Perl DBI or PHP. For more information on obtaining and installing MySQL libraries, see Mac OS X Server version 10.5: MySQL libraries available for download. Alternatively, you can ignore the bundled MySQL server and install MySQL from the package or tarball installation.

MySQL-server-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

The MySQL server. You need this unless you only want to connect to a MySQL server running on another machine.

MySQL-client-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

The standard MySQL client programs. You probably always want to install this package.

MySQL-devel-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

The libraries and include files that are needed if you want to compile other MySQL clients, such as the Perl modules.

MySQL-debuginfo-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

This package contains debugging information. debuginfo RPMs are never needed to use MySQL software; this is true both for the server and for client programs. However, they contain additional information that might be needed by a debugger to analyze a crash.

MySQL-shared-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

This package contains the shared libraries (libmysqlclient.so*) that certain languages and applications need to dynamically load and use MySQL. It contains single-threaded and thread-safe libraries. Prior to MySQL 5.5.6, if you install this package, do not install the MySQL-shared-compat package.

MySQL-shared-compat-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

This package includes the shared libraries for MySQL 3.23, 4.0, and so on. It contains single-threaded and thread-safe libraries. Install this package if you have applications installed that are dynamically linked against older versions of MySQL but you want to upgrade to the current version without breaking the library dependencies. Before MySQL 5.5.6, MySQL-shared-compat also includes the libraries for the current release, so if you install it, you should not also install MySQL-shared. As of 5.5.6, MySQL-shared-compat does not include the current library version, so there is no conflict.

MySQL-embedded-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

The embedded MySQL server library.

MySQL-test-VERSION.glibc23.i386.rpm

This package includes the MySQL test suite.

MySQL-VERSION.src.rpm

This contains the source code for all of the previous packages. It can also be used to rebuild the RPMs on other architectures (for example, Alpha or SPARC).

RedHat Linux, Fedora, CentOS

For RedHat and similar distributions, the MySQL distribution is divided into a number of separate packages, mysql for the client tools, mysql-server for the server and associated tools, and mysql-libs for the libraries. The libraries are required if you want to provide connectivity from different languages and environments such as Perl, Python and others.

To install, use the yum command to specify the packages that you want to install. For example:

root-shell> install mysql mysql-server mysql-libs mysql-server
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package mysql.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13 set to be updated
---> Package mysql-libs.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13 set to be updated
---> Package mysql-server.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: perl-DBD-MySQL for package: mysql-server-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64
--> Running transaction check
---> Package perl-DBD-MySQL.x86_64 0:4.017-1.fc13 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package               Arch          Version               Repository      Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 mysql                 x86_64        5.1.48-2.fc13         updates        889 k
 mysql-libs            x86_64        5.1.48-2.fc13         updates        1.2 M
 mysql-server          x86_64        5.1.48-2.fc13         updates        8.1 M
Installing for dependencies:
 perl-DBD-MySQL        x86_64        4.017-1.fc13          updates        136 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install       4 Package(s)
Upgrade       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 10 M
Installed size: 30 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Setting up and reading Presto delta metadata
Processing delta metadata
Package(s) data still to download: 10 M
(1/4): mysql-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64.rpm                    | 889 kB     00:04     
(2/4): mysql-libs-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64.rpm               | 1.2 MB     00:06     
(3/4): mysql-server-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64.rpm             | 8.1 MB     00:40     
(4/4): perl-DBD-MySQL-4.017-1.fc13.x86_64.rpm            | 136 kB     00:00     
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           201 kB/s |  10 MB     00:52     
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing     : mysql-libs-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64                          1/4 
  Installing     : mysql-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64                               2/4 
  Installing     : perl-DBD-MySQL-4.017-1.fc13.x86_64                       3/4 
  Installing     : mysql-server-5.1.48-2.fc13.x86_64                        4/4 

Installed:
  mysql.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13            mysql-libs.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13    
  mysql-server.x86_64 0:5.1.48-2.fc13    

Dependency Installed:
  perl-DBD-MySQL.x86_64 0:4.017-1.fc13                                          

Complete!

MySQL and the MySQL server should now be installed. A sample configuration file is installed into /etc/my.cnf. An init script, to start and stop the server, will have been installed into /etc/init.d/mysqld. To start the MySQL server use service:

root-shell> service mysqld start

To enable the server to be started and stopped automatically during boot, use chkconfig:

root-shell> chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on

Which enables the MySQL server to be started (and stopped) automatically at the specified the run levels.

The database tables will have been automatically created for you, if they do not already exist. You should, however, run mysql_secure_installation to set the root passwords on your server.

Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu

On Debian and related distributions, there are two packages, mysql-client and mysql-server, for the client and server components respectively. You should specify an explicit version, for example mysql-client-5.1, to ensure that you install the version of MySQL that you want.

To download and install, including any dependencies, use the apt-get command, specifying the pacakges that you want to install.

A sample installation of the MySQL packages might look like this (some sections trimmed for clarity):

root-shell> apt-get install mysql-client-5.1 mysql-server-5.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-2.6.28-11 linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  bsd-mailx libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl
  libmysqlclient15off libmysqlclient16 libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mailx
  mysql-common postfix
Suggested packages:
  dbishell libipc-sharedcache-perl tinyca procmail postfix-mysql postfix-pgsql
  postfix-ldap postfix-pcre sasl2-bin resolvconf postfix-cdb
The following NEW packages will be installed
  bsd-mailx libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libhtml-template-perl
  libmysqlclient15off libmysqlclient16 libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl mailx
  mysql-client-5.1 mysql-common mysql-server-5.1 postfix
0 upgraded, 13 newly installed, 0 to remove and 182 not upgraded.
Need to get 1907kB/25.3MB of archives.
After this operation, 59.5MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Get: 1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty-updates/main mysql-common 5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.5 [63.6kB]
Get: 2 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty-updates/main libmysqlclient15off 5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.5 [1843kB]
Fetched 1907kB in 9s (205kB/s)                                                 
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package mysql-common.
(Reading database ... 121260 files and directories currently installed.)
...
Processing 1 added doc-base file(s)...
Registering documents with scrollkeeper...
Setting up libnet-daemon-perl (0.43-1) ...
Setting up libplrpc-perl (0.2020-1) ...
Setting up libdbi-perl (1.607-1) ...
Setting up libmysqlclient15off (5.1.30really5.0.75-0ubuntu10.5) ...

Setting up libdbd-mysql-perl (4.008-1) ...
Setting up libmysqlclient16 (5.1.31-1ubuntu2) ...

Setting up mysql-client-5.1 (5.1.31-1ubuntu2) ...

Setting up mysql-server-5.1 (5.1.31-1ubuntu2) ...
 * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld
   ...done.
100825 11:46:15  InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 46409
100825 11:46:15  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
100825 11:46:17  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 46409
100825 11:46:17 [Warning] Forcing shutdown of 1 plugins
 * Starting MySQL database server mysqld
   ...done.
 * Checking for corrupt, not cleanly closed and upgrade needing tables.
...
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place

During installation, the initial database will be created, and you will be prompted for the MySQL root password (and confirmation). A configuration file will have been created in /etc/mysql/my.cnf. An init script will have been created in /etc/init.d/mysql.

The server will already be started. You can manually start and stop the server using:

root-shell> service mysql [start|stop]

The service will automatically be added to the 2, 3 and 4 run levels, with stop scripts in the single, shutdown and restart levels.

Gentoo Linux

As a source-based distribution, installing MySQL on Gentoo involves downloading the source, patching the Gentoo specifics, and then compiling the MySQL server and installing it. This process is handled automatically by the emerge command. Depending on the version of MySQL that you want to install, you may need to unmask the specific version that you want for your chosen platform.

The MySQL server and client tools are provided within a single package, dev-db/mysql. You can obtain a list of the versions available to install by looking at the portage directory for the package:

root-shell> ls /usr/portage/dev-db/mysql/mysql-5.1*
mysql-5.1.39-r1.ebuild
mysql-5.1.44-r1.ebuild
mysql-5.1.44-r2.ebuild
mysql-5.1.44-r3.ebuild
mysql-5.1.44.ebuild
mysql-5.1.45-r1.ebuild
mysql-5.1.45.ebuild
mysql-5.1.46.ebuild

To install a specific MySQL version, you must specify the entire atom. For example:

root-shell> emerge =dev-db/mysql-5.1.46

A simpler alternative is to use the virtual/mysql-5.1 package, which will install the latest version:

root-shell> emerge =virtual/mysql-5.1

If the package is masked (because it is not tested or certified for the current platform), use the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS environment variable. For example:

root-shell> ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge =virtual/mysql-5.1

After installation, you should create a new database using mysql_install_db, and set the password for the root user on MySQL. You can use the configuration interface to set the password and create the initial database:

root-shell> emerge --config =dev-db/mysql-5.1.46

A sample configuration file will have been created for you in /etc/mysql/my.cnf, and an init script will have been created in /etc/init.d/mysql.

To enable MySQL to start automatically at the normal (default) run levels, you can use:

root-shell> rc-update add default mysql

When building you should ensure that your PATH variable includes the necessary tools, including ar for building libraries. Some tools are located in /usr/ccs/bin.

When running configure, you should specify the C and C++ compiler explicitly to ensure that the right C compiler combination is used:

$ configure CC=gcc CXX=g++

For detailed information on performance tuning your MySQL installation for Solaris, you can use the information from Krish Shankar and the Sun Solaris MySQL Performance Tuning pages.

If you have an UltraSPARC system, you can get 4% better performance by adding -mcpu=v8 -Wa,-xarch=v8plusa to the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables.

If you have Sun's Forte 5.00 (or newer) or Sun Studio compiler, you can run configure like this:

CC=cc CFLAGS="-Xa -fast -native -xstrconst -mt" \
CXX=CC CXXFLAGS="-noex -mt" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler

To create a 64-bit SPARC binary with Sun's Forte or Sun Studio compiler, use the following configuration options:

CC=cc CFLAGS="-Xa -fast -native -xstrconst -mt -xarch=v9" \
CXX=CC CXXFLAGS="-noex -mt -xarch=v9" ASFLAGS="-xarch=v9" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler

To create a 64-bit Solaris binary using gcc, add -m64 to CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS and remove --enable-assembler from the configure line.

In the MySQL benchmarks, we obtained a 4% speed increase on UltraSPARC when using Forte 5.0 in 32-bit mode, as compared to using gcc 3.2 with the -mcpu flag.

If you create a 64-bit mysqld binary, it is 4% slower than the 32-bit binary, but can handle more threads and memory.

If you get a problem with fdatasync or sched_yield, you can fix this by adding LIBS=-lrt to the configure line

Solaris does not provide static versions of all system libraries (libpthreads and libdl), so you cannot compile MySQL with --static. If you try to do so, you get one of the following errors:

ld: fatal: library -ldl: not found
undefined reference to `dlopen'
cannot find -lrt

If you link your own MySQL client programs, you may see the following error at runtime:

ld.so.1: fatal: libmysqlclient.so.#:
open failed: No such file or directory

This problem can be avoided by one of the following methods:

If you have problems with configure trying to link with -lz when you do not have zlib installed, you have two options:

If you are using gcc and have problems with loading user-defined functions (UDFs) into MySQL, try adding -lgcc to the link line for the UDF.

If you have problems with threads on AIX 5.3, you should upgrade AIX 5.3 to technology level 7 (5300-07).

Automatic detection of xlC is missing from Autoconf, so a number of variables need to be set before running configure. The following example uses the IBM compiler:

export CC="xlc_r -ma -O3 -qstrict -qoptimize=3 -qmaxmem=8192 "
export CXX="xlC_r -ma -O3 -qstrict -qoptimize=3 -qmaxmem=8192"
export CFLAGS="-I /usr/local/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L /usr/local/lib"
export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS

./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
                --localstatedir=/var/mysql \
                --sbindir='/usr/local/bin' \
                --libexecdir='/usr/local/bin' \
                --enable-thread-safe-client \
                --enable-large-files

The preceding options are used to compile the MySQL distribution that can be found at http://www-frec.bull.com/.

If you change the -O3 to -O2 in the preceding configure line, you must also remove the -qstrict option. This is a limitation in the IBM C compiler.

If you are using gcc to compile MySQL, you must use the -fno-exceptions flag, because the exception handling in gcc is not thread-safe. There are also some known problems with IBM's assembler that may cause it to generate bad code when used with gcc.

If you have problems with signals (MySQL dies unexpectedly under high load), you may have found an OS bug with threads and signals. In this case, you can tell MySQL not to use signals by configuring as follows:

CFLAGS=-DDONT_USE_THR_ALARM CXX=gcc \
CXXFLAGS="-felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti \
-DDONT_USE_THR_ALARM" \
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql --with-debug \
    --with-low-memory

This does not affect the performance of MySQL, but has the side effect that you cannot kill clients that are “sleeping” on a connection with mysqladmin kill or mysqladmin shutdown. Instead, the client dies when it issues its next command.

On some versions of AIX, linking with libbind.a makes getservbyname() dump core. This is an AIX bug and should be reported to IBM.

If you install MySQL using a binary tarball distribution on HP-UX, you may run into trouble even before you get the MySQL distribution unpacked, as the HP-UX tar cannot handle long file names. This means that you may see errors when you try to unpack MySQL.

If this occurs, you must use GNU tar (gtar) to unpack the distribution.

Because of some critical bugs in the standard HP-UX libraries, you should install the following patches before trying to run MySQL on HP-UX 11.0:

PHKL_22840 Streams cumulative
PHNE_22397 ARPA cumulative

This solves the problem of getting EWOULDBLOCK from recv() and EBADF from accept() in threaded applications.

If you are using HP-UX compiler, you can use the following command (which has been tested with cc B.11.11.04):

CC=cc CXX=aCC CFLAGS=+DD64 CXXFLAGS=+DD64 ./configure \
    --with-extra-character-set=complex

You can ignore any errors of the following type:

aCC: warning 901: unknown option: `-3': use +help for online
documentation

If you get the following error from configure, verify that you do not have the path to the K&R compiler before the path to the HP-UX C and C++ compiler:

checking for cc option to accept ANSI C... no
configure: error: MySQL requires an ANSI C compiler (and a C++ compiler).
Try gcc. See the Installation chapter in the Reference Manual.

Another reason for not being able to compile is that you did not define the +DD64 flags as just described.

The mysqld server is installed in the libexec directory rather than in the bin directory.

The data directory is var rather than data.

mysql_install_db is installed in the bin directory rather than in the scripts directory.

The header file and library directories are include/mysql and lib/mysql rather than include and lib.

Section 2.7.2, “Notes on Installing MySQL on AIX from Source”

Section 2.8.2, “Notes on Installing MySQL on HP-UX from Source”

Section 2.6.3, “Notes on Installing MySQL on Solaris from Source”

To compile just the MySQL client libraries and client programs and not the server, use the --without-server option:

shell> ./configure --without-server

If you have no C++ compiler, some client programs such as mysql cannot be compiled because they require C++. In this case, you can remove the code in configure that tests for the C++ compiler and then run ./configure with the --without-server option. The compile step should still try to build all clients, but you can ignore any warnings about files such as mysql.cc. (If make stops, try make -k to tell it to continue with the rest of the build even if errors occur.)

If you want to build the embedded MySQL library (libmysqld.a), use the --with-embedded-server option.

If you do not want your log files and database directories located under /usr/local/var, use a configure command something like one of these:

shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
shell> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local \
           --localstatedir=/usr/local/mysql/data

The first command changes the installation prefix so that everything is installed under /usr/local/mysql rather than the default of /usr/local. The second command preserves the default installation prefix, but overrides the default location for database directories (normally /usr/local/var) and changes it to /usr/local/mysql/data.

You can also specify the installation directory and data directory locations at server startup time by using the --basedir and --datadir options. These can be given on the command line or in an MySQL option file, although it is more common to use an option file. See Section 4.2.3.3, “Using Option Files”.

This option specifies the port number on which the server listens for TCP/IP connections. The default is port 3306. To listen on a different port, use a configure command like this:

shell> ./configure --with-tcp-port=3307

If you are using Unix and you want the MySQL socket file location to be somewhere other than the default location (normally in the directory /tmp or /var/run), use a configure command like this:

shell> ./configure \
           --with-unix-socket-path=/usr/local/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock

The socket file name must be an absolute path name. You can also change the location of mysql.sock at server startup by using a MySQL option file. See Section C.5.4.5, “How to Protect or Change the MySQL Unix Socket File”.

If you want to compile statically linked programs (for example, to make a binary distribution, to get better performance, or to work around problems with some Red Hat Linux distributions), run configure like this:

shell> ./configure --with-client-ldflags=-all-static \
           --with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static

If you are using gcc and do not have libg++ or libstdc++ installed, you can tell configure to use gcc as your C++ compiler:

shell> CC=gcc CXX=gcc ./configure

When you use gcc as your C++ compiler, it does not attempt to link in libg++ or libstdc++. This may be a good thing to do even if you have those libraries installed. Some versions of them have caused strange problems for MySQL users in the past.

The following list indicates some compilers and environment variable settings that are commonly used with each one.

In most cases, you can get a reasonably optimized MySQL binary by using the following options to the configure line:

--prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
--with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static

The full configure line would, in other words, be something like the following for all recent gcc versions:

CFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro" CXX=gcc CXXFLAGS="-O3 -mpentiumpro \
-felide-constructors -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti" ./configure \
--prefix=/usr/local/mysql --enable-assembler \
--with-mysqld-ldflags=-all-static

The binaries we provide on the MySQL Web site at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/ are all compiled with full optimization and should be perfect for most users. See Section 2.2, “Installing MySQL from Generic Binaries on Unix/Linux”. There are some configuration settings you can tweak to build an even faster binary, but these are only for advanced users. See Section 2.11.6, “Compiling and Linking an Optimized mysqld Server”.

If the build fails and produces errors about your compiler or linker not being able to create the shared library libmysqlclient.so.N (where N is a version number), you can work around this problem by giving the --disable-shared option to configure. In this case, configure does not build a shared libmysqlclient.so.N library.

By default, MySQL uses the latin1 (cp1252 West European) character set. To change the default set, use the --with-charset option:

shell> ./configure --with-charset=CHARSET

CHARSET may be one of binary, armscii8, ascii, big5, cp1250, cp1251, cp1256, cp1257, cp850, cp852, cp866, cp932, dec8, eucjpms, euckr, gb2312, gbk, geostd8, greek, hebrew, hp8, keybcs2, koi8r, koi8u, latin1, latin2, latin5, latin7, macce, macroman, sjis, swe7, tis620, ucs2, ujis, utf8, utf8mb4, utf16, utf32. (Additional character sets might be available. Check the output from ./configure --help for the current list.)

The default collation may also be specified. MySQL uses the latin1_swedish_ci collation by default. To change this, use the --with-collation option:

shell> ./configure --with-collation=COLLATION

To change both the character set and the collation, use both the --with-charset and --with-collation options. The collation must be a legal collation for the character set. (Use the SHOW COLLATION statement to determine which collations are available for each character set.)

With the configure option --with-extra-charsets=LIST, you can define which additional character sets should be compiled into the server. LIST is one of the following:

Clients that want to convert characters between the server and the client should use the SET NAMES statement. See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”, and Section 9.1.4, “Connection Character Sets and Collations”.

To configure MySQL with debugging code, use the --with-debug option:

shell> ./configure --with-debug

This causes a safe memory allocator to be included that can find some errors and that provides output about what is happening. See MySQL Internals: Porting.

Using --with-debug to configure MySQL with debugging support enables you to use the --debug="d,parser_debug" option when you start the server. This causes the Bison parser that is used to process SQL statements to dump a parser trace to the server's standard error output. Typically, this output is written to the error log.

To cause the Debug Sync facility to be compiled into the server, use the --enable-debug-sync option. This facility is used for testing and debugging. When compiled in, Debug Sync is disabled by default. To enable it, start mysqld with the --debug-sync-timeout=N option, where N is a timeout value greater than 0. (The default value is 0, which disables Debug Sync.) N becomes the default timeout for individual synchronization points.

Debug Sync is also compiled in if you configure with the --with-debug option (which implies --enable-debug-sync), unless you also use the --disable-debug-sync option.

For a description of the Debug Sync facility and how to use synchronization points, see MySQL Internals: Test Synchronization.

The --enable-dtrace option causes support for DTrace probes to be included. Use the --disable-dtrace to disable DTrace probe support.

If your client programs are using threads, you must compile a thread-safe version of the MySQL client library with the --enable-thread-safe-client configure option. This creates a libmysqlclient_r library with which you should link your threaded applications. See Section 21.9.16.2, “How to Make a Threaded Client”.

Some features require that the server be built with compression library support, such as the COMPRESS() and UNCOMPRESS() functions, and compression of the client/server protocol. The --with-zlib-dir=no|bundled|DIR option provides control over compression library support. The value no explicitly disables compression support. bundled causes the zlib library bundled in the MySQL sources to be used. A DIR path name specifies the directory in which to find the compression library sources.

It is possible to build MySQL with large table support using the --with-big-tables option.

This option causes the variables that store table row counts to be declared as unsigned long long rather than unsigned long. This enables tables to hold up to approximately 1.844E+19 ((2³²)²) rows rather than 2³² (~4.295E+09) rows. Previously it was necessary to pass -DBIG_TABLES to the compiler manually in order to enable this feature.

Run configure with the --disable-grant-options option to cause the --bootstrap, --skip-grant-tables, and --init-file options for mysqld to be disabled. For Windows, the configure.js script recognizes the DISABLE_GRANT_OPTIONS flag, which has the same effect.

The --enable-profiling option enables the statement profiling capability exposed by the SHOW PROFILE and SHOW PROFILES statements. (See Section 12.4.5.32, “SHOW PROFILES Syntax”.) This option is enabled by default; to disable it, use --disable-profiling.

See Section 2.1, “General Installation Guidance”, for options that pertain to particular operating systems.

See Section 5.5.6.2, “Using SSL Connections”, for options that pertain to configuring MySQL to support secure (encrypted) connections.

Several configure options apply to plugin selection and building:

--with-plugins=PLUGIN[,PLUGIN]...
--with-plugins=GROUP
--with-plugin-PLUGIN
--without-plugin-PLUGIN

PLUGIN is an individual plugin name such as csv or archive.

As shorthand, GROUP is a configuration group name such as none (select no plugins) or all (select all plugins).

You can build a plugin as static (compiled into the server) or dynamic (built as a dynamic library that must be installed using the INSTALL PLUGIN statement before it can be used). Some plugins might not support static or dynamic build.

configure --help shows the following information pertaining to plugins:

--with-plugins can take a list of one or more plugin names separated by commas, or a plugin group name. The named plugins are configured to be built as static plugins.

--with-plugin-PLUGIN configures the given plugin to be built as a static plugin.

--without-plugin-PLUGIN disables the given plugin from being built.

If a plugin is named both with a --with and --without option, the result is undefined.

For any plugin that is not explicitly selected or disabled, it is selected to be built dynamically if it supports dynamic build, and not built if it does not support dynamic build. (Thus, in the case that no plugin options are given, all plugins that support dynamic build are selected to be built as dynamic plugins. Plugins that do not support dynamic build are not built.)

GNU make, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/make/. Although some platforms come with their own make implementations, it is highly recommended that you use GNU make. It may already be available on your system as gmake.

autoconf 2.58 (or newer), available from http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/.

automake 1.8.1, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/.

libtool 1.5, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/.

m4, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/.

bison, available from http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/. You should use the latest version of bison where possible. Version 1.75 and version 2.1 are known to work. There have been reported problems with bison 1.875. If you experience problems, upgrade to a later, rather than earlier, version. Versions of bison older than 1.75 may report this error:

sql_yacc.yy:#####: fatal error: maximum table size (32767) exceeded

The maximum table size is not actually exceeded; the error is caused by bugs in older versions of bison.

If configure is run after it has previously been run, it may use information that was gathered during its previous invocation. This information is stored in config.cache. When configure starts up, it looks for that file and reads its contents if it exists, on the assumption that the information is still correct. That assumption is invalid when you reconfigure.

Each time you run configure, you must run make again to recompile. However, you may want to remove old object files from previous builds first because they were compiled using different configuration options.

If you get errors such as the ones shown here when compiling sql_yacc.cc, you probably have run out of memory or swap space:

Internal compiler error: program cc1plus got fatal signal 11
Out of virtual memory
Virtual memory exhausted

The problem is that gcc requires a huge amount of memory to compile sql_yacc.cc with inline functions. Try running configure with the --with-low-memory option:

shell> ./configure --with-low-memory

This option causes -fno-inline to be added to the compile line if you are using gcc and -O0 if you are using something else. You should try the --with-low-memory option even if you have so much memory and swap space that you think you can't possibly have run out. This problem has been observed to occur even on systems with generous hardware configurations, and the --with-low-memory option usually fixes it.

By default, configure picks c++ as the compiler name and GNU c++ links with -lg++. If you are using gcc, that behavior can cause problems during configuration such as this:

configure: error: installation or configuration problem:
C++ compiler cannot create executables.

You might also observe problems during compilation related to g++, libg++, or libstdc++.

One cause of these problems is that you may not have g++, or you may have g++ but not libg++, or libstdc++. Take a look at the config.log file. It should contain the exact reason why your C++ compiler didn't work. To work around these problems, you can use gcc as your C++ compiler. Try setting the environment variable CXX to "gcc -O3". For example:

shell> CXX="gcc -O3" ./configure

This works because gcc compiles C++ source files as well as g++ does, but does not link in libg++ or libstdc++ by default.

Another way to fix these problems is to install g++, libg++, and libstdc++. However, do not use libg++ or libstdc++ with MySQL because this only increases the binary size of mysqld without providing any benefits. Some versions of these libraries have also caused strange problems for MySQL users in the past.

If your compile fails with errors such as any of the following, you must upgrade your version of make to GNU make:

make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 18:
Badly formed macro assignment

Or:

make: file `Makefile' line 18: Must be a separator (:

Or:

pthread.h: No such file or directory

Solaris and FreeBSD are known to have troublesome make programs.

GNU make 3.75 is known to work.

If you want to define flags to be used by your C or C++ compilers, do so by adding the flags to the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS environment variables. You can also specify the compiler names this way using CC and CXX. For example:

shell> CC=gcc
shell> CFLAGS=-O3
shell> CXX=gcc
shell> CXXFLAGS=-O3
shell> export CC CFLAGS CXX CXXFLAGS

See Section 2.2, “Installing MySQL from Generic Binaries on Unix/Linux”, for a list of flag definitions that have been found to be useful on various systems.

If you get errors such as those shown here when compiling mysqld, configure did not correctly detect the type of the last argument to accept(), getsockname(), or getpeername():

cxx: Error: mysqld.cc, line 645: In this statement, the referenced
     type of the pointer value ''length'' is ''unsigned long'',
     which is not compatible with ''int''.
new_sock = accept(sock, (struct sockaddr *)&cAddr, &length);

To fix this, edit the config.h file (which is generated by configure). Look for these lines:

/* Define as the base type of the last arg to accept */
#define SOCKET_SIZE_TYPE XXX

Change XXX to size_t or int, depending on your operating system. (You must do this each time you run configure because configure regenerates config.h.)

The sql_yacc.cc file is generated from sql_yacc.yy. Normally, the build process does not need to create sql_yacc.cc because MySQL comes with a pre-generated copy. However, if you do need to re-create it, you might encounter this error:

"sql_yacc.yy", line xxx fatal: default action causes potential...

This is a sign that your version of yacc is deficient. You probably need to install bison (the GNU version of yacc) and use that instead.

On Debian Linux 3.0, you need to install gawk instead of the default mawk.

If you need to debug mysqld or a MySQL client, run configure with the --with-debug option, and then recompile and link your clients with the new client library. See MySQL Internals: Porting.

If you get a compilation error on Linux (for example, SuSE Linux 8.1 or Red Hat Linux 7.3) similar to the following one, you probably do not have g++ installed:

libmysql.c:1329: warning: passing arg 5 of `gethostbyname_r' from
incompatible pointer type
libmysql.c:1329: too few arguments to function `gethostbyname_r'
libmysql.c:1329: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer
without a cast
make[2]: *** [libmysql.lo] Error 1

By default, the configure script attempts to determine the correct number of arguments by using g++ (the GNU C++ compiler). This test yields incorrect results if g++ is not installed. There are two ways to work around this problem:

You must run configure again after making either of those changes.

If you use pgcc and compile everything with -O6, the mysqld server is 1% faster than with gcc 2.95.2.

If you link dynamically (without -static), the result is 13% slower on Linux. Note that you still can use a dynamically linked MySQL library for your client applications. It is the server that is most critical for performance.

For a connection from a client to a server running on the same host, if you connect using TCP/IP rather than a Unix socket file, performance is 7.5% slower. (On Unix, if you connect to the host name localhost, MySQL uses a socket file by default.)

For TCP/IP connections from a client to a server, connecting to a remote server on another host is 8% to 11% slower than connecting to a server on the same host, even for connections faster than 100Mb/s Ethernet.

When running our benchmark tests using secure connections (all data encrypted with internal SSL support) performance was 55% slower than with unencrypted connections.

On a Sun UltraSPARC-IIe, a server compiled with Forte 5.0 is 4% faster than one compiled with gcc 3.2.

On a Sun UltraSPARC-IIe, a server compiled with Forte 5.0 is 4% faster in 32-bit mode than in 64-bit mode.

Compiling with gcc 2.95.2 for UltraSPARC with the -mcpu=v8 -Wa,-xarch=v8plusa options gives 4% more performance.

Compiling on Linux-x86 using gcc without frame pointers (-fomit-frame-pointer or -fomit-frame-pointer -ffixed-ebp) makes mysqld 1% to 4% faster.

If you install MySQL on Linux using RPM distributions, the server RPM runs mysql_install_db.

Using the native packaging system on many platforms, including Windows (MSI), Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, Gentoo Linux and others, the mysql_install_db command is run for you.

If you install MySQL on Mac OS X using a PKG distribution, the installer runs mysql_install_db.