- Stopping a pre-installed MySQL/MariaDB from interfering with your tests
- How to create a binary distribution (tar file)
- Creating a directory structure for the different installations
- Setting up the data directory
- Running a MariaDB server
- Setting up a .my.cnf file for running multiple MariaDB main versions
This article is about managing many different installed MariaDB versions and running them one at a time. This is useful when doing benchmarking, testing, or for when developing different MariaDB versions.
This is most easily done using the tar files from downloads.askmonty.org.
Stopping a pre-installed MySQL/MariaDB from interfering with your tests
If MySQL/MariaDB is already installed and running, you have two options:
- Use test MariaDB servers with a different port & socket.
- In this case you are probably best off creating a specific section for
MariaDB in your
- In this case you are probably best off creating a specific section for MariaDB in your
- Stop mysqld with
Note that you don't have to uninstall or otherwise remove MySQL!
How to create a binary distribution (tar file)
Here is a short description of how to generate a tar file from a source distribution. If you have downloaded a binary tar file, you can skip this section.
The steps to create a binary tar file are:
- Decide where to put the source. A good place is under
- Get the source
- Compile the source
- Create the binary tar ball.
You will then be left with a tar file named something like:
Creating a directory structure for the different installations
Install the binary tar files under
the following directory names (one for each MariaDB version you want to use):
The above assumes you are just testing major versions of MariaDB. If you are
testing specific versions, use directory names like
With the directories in place, create a sym-link named
mariadb which points
mariadb-XXX directory you are currently testing. When you want to
switch to testing a different version, just update the sym-link.
cd /usr/local tar xfz /tmp/mariadb-5.3.2-MariaDB-beta-linux-x86_64.tar.gz mv -vi mariadb-5.3.2-MariaDB-beta-linux-x86_64 mariadb-5.3 ln -vs mariadb-5.3 mariadb
Setting up the data directory
When setting up the data directory, you have the option of either using a
shared database directory or creating a unique database directory for each
server version. For testing, a common directory is probably easiest. Note that
you can only have one
mysqld server running against one data
Setting up a common data directory
The steps are:
- Create the
mysqlsystem user if you don't have it already! (On Linux you do it with the
- Create the directory (we call it
mariadb-datain the example below) or add a symlink to a directory which is in some other place.
- Create the
mysqlpermission tables with
cd /usr/local/ mkdir mariadb-data cd mariadb ./bin/mysql_install_db --no-defaults --datadir=/usr/local/mariadb-data chown -R mysql mariadb-data mariadb-data/*
The reason to use
--no-defaults is to ensure that we don't
inherit incorrect options from some old my.cnf.
Setting up different data directories
To create a different
data directories for each installation:
cd mariadb ./scripts/mysql_install_db --no-defaults chown -R mysql mariadb-data mariadb-data/*
This will create a directory
data inside the
If you want to use another disk you should do:
cd mariadb ln -s path-to-empty-directory-for-data data ./scripts/mysql_install_db --no-defaults --datadir=./data chown -R mysql mariadb-data mariadb-data/*
Running a MariaDB server
The normal steps are:
rm mariadb ln -s mariadb-5.# mariadb cd mariadb ./bin/mysqld_safe --no-defaults --datadir=/usr/local/mariadb-data &
Setting up a .my.cnf file for running multiple MariaDB main versions
If you are going to start/stop MariaDB a lot of times, you should create
~/.my.cnf file for the common options you are using.
The following example shows how to use a non-standard TCP-port and socket (to not interfere with a main MySQL/MariaDB server) and how to setup different options for each main server:
[client-server] socket=/tmp/mysql.sock port=3306 [mysqld] datadir=/usr/local/mariadb-data [mariadb-5.2] # Options for MariaDB 5.2 [mariadb-5.3] # Options for MariaDB 5.3
If you create an
~/.my.cnf file, you should start
--no-defaults in the examples above.