Managing & Using MySQL, 2nd Edition

Binary (Tarball) Distributions

To install a binary distribution, you need the tar utility and the GNU gunzip utility. These tools are now a part of the standard distribution of many Unix systems.

Warning

Solaris tar is known to have problems with some of the long filenames in the MySQL binary distribution. To unpack the binary distribution successfully on a Solaris system, you may need to obtain GNU gtar. A binary distribution version of this is available from http://www.mysql.com/downloads/os-solaris.html.

The binary distributions are all named using the following convention: mysql- version-os .tar.gz. The version placeholder is the version number of the software contained in the distribution. The os placeholder is the operating system for which the binary distribution is built. Binary distributions named mysql-max- version-os .tar.gz contain a version of MySQL compiled with support for transaction-safe tables.

Assume, for example, that we have chosen to install MySQL 3.23.40 on a Sun Solaris server. Also assume the distribution file mysql-3.23.40-sun-solaris2.7-sparc.tar.gz has been downloaded into the /tmp directory.

We recommend that you create a user and group for MySQL administration. This user should be used to run the mysql server and perform administrative tasks. It is possible to run the server as root, but this is not recommended.

The first step is to create a user to run the MySQL server. On Solaris and Linux, this can be done with the useradd and groupadd utilities. ...