I started playing with MySQL back in the 4.X days, but never invested a lot of my time since my day job required me to support Oracle databases. I’m trying to branch out more now, and recently picked up a copy of MySQL, MySQL High Availability and PHP And MySQL. There are a slew of things I would like to web-enable, so I’m hoping to learn everything I can about PHP and MySQL in the next few months.
To allow me to start experimenting with PHP and MySQL, I needed to create a test environment. My MySQL environment consists of two CentOS 6 virtual machines running MySQL 5.1.X. Getting MySQL working on these two machines was amazingly easy. First, I installed the mysql packages with yum:
$ yum install mysql mysql-server
Next I started up the MySQL services and made sure they started at boot:
$ chkconfig mysqld on
$ service mysqld start
And finally I secured my MySQL installation by running the mysql_secure_installation script:
$ /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation
NOTE: RUNNING ALL PARTS OF THIS SCRIPT IS RECOMMENDED FOR ALL MySQL
SERVERS IN PRODUCTION USE! PLEASE READ EACH STEP CAREFULLY!
In order to log into MySQL to secure it, we'll need the current
password for the root user. If you've just installed MySQL, and
you haven't set the root password yet, the password will be blank,
so you should just press enter here.
Enter current password for root (enter for none):
OK, successfully used password, moving on...
Setting the root password ensures that nobody can log into the MySQL
root user without the proper authorisation.
Set root password? [Y/n] y
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Password updated successfully!
Reloading privilege tables..
... Success!
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? [Y/n] 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? [Y/n] 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? [Y/n] 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? [Y/n] y
... Success!
Cleaning up...
All done! If you've completed all of the above steps, your MySQL
installation should now be secure.
Thanks for using MySQL!
Once this completed I restarted MySQL and could login using the root user (additional accounts will be added in the near future):
$ service mysqld restart
Stopping mysqld: [ OK ]
Starting mysqld: [ OK ]
$ mysql -h localhost -u root --password=XXXXXXXX
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or g.
Your MySQL connection id is 2
Server version: 5.1.52-log Source distribution
Copyright (c) 2000, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software,
and you are welcome to modify and redistribute it under the GPL v2 license
Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the current input statement.
mysql>
It took me 5 minutes to get MySQL to a state were I could enable replication and create databases. Nice!