Install MySQL on CentOS 7

With the release of CentOS 7 MySQL, the world’s most popular open-source relational database management system is no longer available in the CentOS’s repositories and MariaDB has become the default database system. MariaDB is a backward compatible, binary drop-in replacement of MySQL.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL on a CentOS 7 machine.

Prerequisites #

Before starting with this tutorial, make sure you are logged into your server with a user account with sudo privileges or with the root user. It is best practice to run administrative commands as sudo user instead of root, if you don’t have a sudo user on your system you can create one by following these instructions .

As we mentioned in the introduction MySQL is not available in the default CentOS 7 repositories so we will be installing the packages from the MySQL Yum Repository . In the following sections, we will show you how to install MySQL 8.0 and MySQL 5.7.

You should install only one MySQL version on your CentOS 7 server. If you are not sure which version to install consult the documentation of the applications you’re going to deploy on your server.

Install MySQL 8.0 on CentOS 7 #

At the time of writing this article, the latest version of MySQL is version 8.0. To install it on your CentOS 7 server follow the steps below:

1. Enable the MySQL 8.0 repository with the following command:

   sudo yum localinstall https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql80-community-release-el7-1.noarch.rpm

2. Install MySQL 8.0 package with yum:

   sudo yum install mysql-community-server

   During the installation yum may prompt you to import the MySQL GPG key. Type y and hit Enter.

Install MySQL 5.7 on CentOS 7 #

To install the previous stable release of MySQL, MySQL version 5.7 on a CentOS 7 server, follow the steps below:

1. Enable the MySQL 5.7 repository with the following command:

   sudo yum localinstall https://dev.mysql.com/get/mysql57-community-release-el7-11.noarch.rpm

2. Install MySQL 5.7 package with:

   Install MySQL as any other package using yum:

   sudo yum install mysql-community-server

Starting MySQL #

Once the installation is completed, start the MySQL service and enable it to automatically start on boot with:

sudo systemctl enable mysqldsudo systemctl start mysqld

We can check the MySQL service status by typing:

sudo systemctl status mysqld

● mysqld.service - MySQL Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysqld.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Wed 2018-05-23 11:02:43 UTC; 14min ago
     Docs: man:mysqld(8)
           http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/en/using-systemd.html
  Process: 4293 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/mysqld_pre_systemd (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 4310 (mysqld)
   Status: "SERVER_OPERATING"
   CGroup: /system.slice/mysqld.service
           └─4310 /usr/sbin/mysqld

Securing MySQL #

When the MySQL server is started for the first time, a temporary password is generated for the MySQL root user. You can find the password by running the following command:

sudo grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log

The output should look something like this:

2018-05-23T10:59:51.251159Z 5 [Note] [MY-010454] [Server] A temporary password is generated for root@localhost: q&0)V!?fjksL

Make note of the password, because the next command will ask you to enter the temporary root password.

Run the mysql_secure_installation command to improve the security of our MySQL installation:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Securing the MySQL server deployment.

Enter password for user root:

After entering the temporary password you will be asked to set a new password for user root. The password needs to be at least 8-characters long and to contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, and one special character.

The existing password for the user account root has expired. Please set a new password.

New password:

Re-enter new password:

The script will also ask you to remove the anonymous user, restrict root user access to the local machine and remove the test database. You should answer “Y” (yes) to all questions.

Connecting to MySQL from the command line #

To interact with MySQL through the terminal we will use the MySQL client which is installed as a dependency of the MySQL server package.

To log in to the MySQL server as the root user type:

mysql -u root -p

You will be prompted to enter the root password you have previously set when the mysql_secure_installation script was run.

Once you enter the password you will be presented with the mysql shell as shown below:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 11
Server version: 8.0.11 MySQL Community Server - GPL

Copyright (c) 2000, 2018, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

Create a Database #

Once you are connected to the MySQL shell, you can create a new database by typing the following command:

CREATE DATABASE new_database;

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Create Tables #

Now that we created a database we can create a table to store some data.

Before running the SQL statements for creating a table we need to connect to the database:

use new_database;

In this example we will create a simple table named contacts with three fields, id, name and email:

CREATE TABLE contacts (
  id INT PRIMARY KEY,
  name VARCHAR(30),
  email VARCHAR(30)
);

Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Conclusion #

In this tutorial, we’ve shown you how to install and secure a MySQL server on a CentOS 7 server. We have also shown you how to connect to the MySQL shell and how to create a new database and table.

Now that your MySQL server is up and running and you know how to connect to the MySQL server from the command line, you might want to check the following guides:

• How to manage MySQL user accounts and databases
• How to reset a MySQL root password
• How to Create a MySQL Database
• How to Create MySQL Users Accounts and Grant Privileges
• How to Show MySQL Users
• How to Back Up and Restore MySQL Databases with Mysqldump

If you prefer a web interface over command line, you can install phpMyAdmin and manage your MySQL databases through it.