Add a login user and group for mysqld to run as:

shell> groupadd mysql
shell> useradd -g mysql mysql

These commands add the mysql group and the mysql user. The syntax for useradd and groupadd may differ slightly on different versions of Unix, or they may have different names such as adduser and addgroup.

You might want to call the user and group something else instead of mysql. If so, substitute the appropriate name in the following steps.

Pick the directory under which you want to unpack the distribution and change location into it. In the following example, we unpack the distribution under /usr/local. (The instructions, therefore, assume that you have permission to create files and directories in /usr/local. If that directory is protected, you must perform the installation as root.)

shell> cd /usr/local

Obtain a distribution file using the instructions in Section 2.1.3, “How to Get MySQL”. For a given release, binary distributions for all platforms are built from the same MySQL source distribution.

Unpack the distribution, which creates the installation directory. Then create a symbolic link to that directory:

shell> gunzip < /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz | tar xvf -
shell> ln -s full-path-to-mysql-VERSION-OS mysql

The tar command creates a directory named mysql-VERSION-OS. The ln command makes a symbolic link to that directory. This lets you refer more easily to the installation directory as /usr/local/mysql.

With GNU tar, no separate invocation of gunzip is necessary. You can replace the first line with the following alternative command to uncompress and extract the distribution:

shell> tar zxvf /path/to/mysql-VERSION-OS.tar.gz

Change location into the installation directory:

shell> cd mysql

You will find several files and subdirectories in the mysql directory. The most important for installation purposes are the bin and scripts subdirectories:

If you have not installed MySQL before, you must create the MySQL grant tables:

shell> scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

If you run the command as root, you must use the --user option as shown. The value of the option should be the name of the login account that you created in the first step to use for running the server. If you run the command while logged in as that user, you can omit the --user option.

After creating or updating the grant tables, you need to restart the server manually.

Change the ownership of program binaries to root and ownership of the data directory to the user that you run mysqld as. Assuming that you are located in the installation directory (/usr/local/mysql), the commands look like this:

shell> chown -R root  .
shell> chown -R mysql data
shell> chgrp -R mysql .

The first command changes the owner attribute of the files to the root user. The second changes the owner attribute of the data directory to the mysql user. The third changes the group attribute to the mysql group.

If you want MySQL to start automatically when you boot your machine, you can copy support-files/mysql.server to the location where your system has its startup files. More information can be found in the support-files/mysql.server script itself and in Section 2.10.2.2, “Starting and Stopping MySQL Automatically”.

You can set up new accounts using the bin/mysql_setpermission script if you install the DBI and DBD::mysql Perl modules. For instructions, see Section 2.14, “Perl Installation Notes”.

If you would like to use mysqlaccess and have the MySQL distribution in some non-standard location, you must change the location where mysqlaccess expects to find the mysql client. Edit the bin/mysqlaccess script at approximately line 18. Search for a line that looks like this:

$MYSQL     = '/usr/local/bin/mysql';    # path to mysql executable

Change the path to reflect the location where mysql actually is stored on your system. If you do not do this, a Broken pipe error will occur when you run mysqlaccess.