How to install MySQL on Ubuntu

How to install MySQL on Ubuntu

Step 1 — Installing MySQL

To install it, update the package index on your server if you’ve not done so recently:

sudo apt update or apt update


Then install the mysql-server package:
sudo apt install mysql-server


Ensure that the server is running using the systemctl start command:
sudo systemctl start mysql.service


Step 2 — Configuring MySQL

sudo mysql

Then run the following ALTER USER command to change the root user’s authentication method to one that uses a password. The following example changes the authentication method to mysql_native_password:

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
exit

Following that, you can run the mysql_secure_installation script without issue.
sudo mysql_secure_installation

This will take you through a series of prompts where you can make some changes to your MySQL installation’s security options. The first prompt will ask whether you’d like to set up the Validate Password Plugin, which can be used to test the password strength of new MySQL users before deeming them valid.

If you elect to set up the Validate Password Plugin, any MySQL user you create that authenticates with a password will be required to have a password that satisfies the policy you select:

Output:

Securing the MySQL server deployment.
Enter password for user root:

VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component?

Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: Y
There are three levels of password validation policy:
LOW Length >= 8
MEDIUM Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, and special characters
STRONG Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, special characters and dictionary file

Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG: 2
Using existing password for root.
Estimated strength of the password: 25
Change the password for root ? ((Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
New password:
Re-enter new password:

Estimated strength of the password: 100
Do you wish to continue with the password provided?(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.

Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.

Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.

Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
- Dropping test database...
Success.
- Removing privileges on test database...
Success.

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far will take effect immediately.
Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.
All done!

$ mysql -u root -p

Then go back to using the default authentication method using this command:
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH auth_socket;

This will mean that you can once again connect to MySQL as your root user using the sudo mysql command.


Step 3 — Creating a Dedicated MySQL User and Granting Privileges

sudo mysql

Note: If you installed MySQL with another tutorial and enabled password authentication for root, you will need to use a different command to access the MySQL shell. The following will run your MySQL client with regular user privileges, and you will only gain administrator privileges within the database by authenticating:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE USER 'username'@'host' IDENTIFIED WITH authentication_plugin BY 'password';

Run the following command to create a user that authenticates with caching_sha2_password. Be sure to change sammy to your preferred username and password to a strong password of your choosing:

CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Note: There is a known issue with some versions of PHP that causes problems with caching_sha2_password. If you plan to use this database with a PHP application — phpMyAdmin, for example — you may want to create a user that will authenticate with the older, though still secure, mysql_native_password plugin instead:

CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

If you aren’t sure, you can always create a user that authenticates with caching_sha2_plugin and then ALTER it later on with this command:

ALTER USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

After creating your new user, you can grant them the appropriate privileges. The general syntax for granting user privileges is as follows:

GRANT PRIVILEGE ON database.table TO 'username'@'host';

Run this GRANT statement, replacing sammy with your own MySQL user’s name, to grant these privileges to your user:

GRANT CREATE, ALTER, DROP, INSERT, UPDATE, INDEX, DELETE, SELECT, REFERENCES, RELOAD on *.*

Note that this statement also includes WITH GRANT OPTION. This will allow your MySQL user to grant any permissions that it has to other users on the system

Warning: Some users may want to grant their MySQL user the ALL PRIVILEGES privilege, which will provide them with broad superuser privileges akin to the root user’s privileges, like so:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'sammy'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Such broad privileges should not be granted lightly, as anyone with access to this MySQL user will have complete control over every database on the server.

Following this, it’s good practice to run the FLUSH PRIVILEGES command. This will free up any memory that the server cached as a result of the preceding CREATE USER and GRANT statements:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Then you can exit the MySQL client:

exit

In the future, to log in as your new MySQL user, you’d use a command like the following:

mysql -u sammy -p

The -p flag will cause the MySQL client to prompt you for your MySQL user’s password in order to authenticate.

Finally, let’s test the MySQL installation.

Step 4 — Testing MySQL

Regardless of how you installed it, MySQL should have started running automatically. To test this, check its status.

systemctl status mysql.service

The output will be similar to the following:

Output

● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-04-11 16:04:39 UTC; 2h 36min ago
Process: 2593 ExecStartPre=/usr/share/mysql/mysql-systemd-start pre (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 2601 (mysqld)
Status: "Server is operational"
Tasks: 38 (limit: 1119)
Memory: 354.3M
CPU: 19.944s
CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service
└─2601 /usr/sbin/mysqld


If MySQL isn’t running, you can start it with sudo systemctl start mysql.

Source/Reference:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-mysql-on-ubuntu-22-04