The recommended way to install MySQL on RPM-based Linux distributions is by using the RPM packages provided by Oracle. There are two sources for obtaining them, for the Community Edition of MySQL:

MySQL RPM Packages

The full names for the RPMs have the following syntax:

packagename-version-distribution-arch.rpm

The distribution and arch values indicate the Linux distribution and the processor type for which the package was built. See the table below for lists of the distribution identifiers:

To see all files in an RPM package (for example, mysql-community-server), use the following command:

$> rpm -qpl mysql-community-server-version-distribution-arch.rpm

The discussion in the rest of this section applies only to an installation process using the RPM packages directly downloaded from Oracle, instead of through a MySQL repository.

Dependency relationships exist among some of the packages. If you plan to install many of the packages, you may wish to download the RPM bundle tar file instead, which contains all the RPM packages listed above, so that you need not download them separately.

In most cases, you need to install the mysql-community-server, mysql-community-client, mysql-community-client-plugins, mysql-community-libs, mysql-community-icu-data-files, mysql-community-common, and mysql-community-libs-compat packages to get a functional, standard MySQL installation. To perform such a standard, basic installation, go to the folder that contains all those packages (and, preferably, no other RPM packages with similar names), and issue the following command:

$> sudo yum install mysql-community-{server,client,client-plugins,icu-data-files,common,libs}-*

Replace yum with zypper for SLES, and with dnf for Fedora.

While it is much preferable to use a high-level package management tool like yum to install the packages, users who prefer direct rpm commands can replace the yum install command with the rpm -Uvh command; however, using rpm -Uvh instead makes the installation process more prone to failure, due to potential dependency issues the installation process might run into.

To install only the client programs, you can skip mysql-community-server in your list of packages to install; issue the following command:

$> sudo yum install mysql-community-{client,client-plugins,common,libs}-*

Replace yum with zypper for SLES, and with dnf for Fedora.

A standard installation of MySQL using the RPM packages result in files and resources created under the system directories, shown in the following table.

The installation also creates a user named mysql and a group named mysql on the system.

MySQL is NOT automatically started at the end of the installation process. For Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, CentOS, and Fedora systems, use the following command to start MySQL:

$> systemctl start mysqld

For SLES systems, the command is the same, but the service name is different:

$> systemctl start mysql

If the operating system is systemd enabled, standard systemctl (or alternatively, service with the arguments reversed) commands such as stop, start, status, and restart should be used to manage the MySQL server service. The mysqld service is enabled by default, and it starts at system reboot. Notice that certain things might work differently on systemd platforms: for example, changing the location of the data directory might cause issues. See Section 2.5.9, “Managing MySQL Server with systemd” for additional information.

During an upgrade installation using RPM and DEB packages, if the MySQL server is running when the upgrade occurs then the MySQL server is stopped, the upgrade occurs, and the MySQL server is restarted. One exception: if the edition also changes during an upgrade (such as community to commercial, or vice-versa), then MySQL server is not restarted.

At the initial start up of the server, the following happens, given that the data directory of the server is empty:

$> mysql -uroot -p

mysql> ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass4!';

If something goes wrong during installation, you might find debug information in the error log file /var/log/mysqld.log.

For some Linux distributions, it might be necessary to increase the limit on number of file descriptors available to mysqld. See Section B.3.2.16, “File Not Found and Similar Errors”

Installing Client Libraries from Multiple MySQL Versions.  It is possible to install multiple client library versions, such as for the case that you want to maintain compatibility with older applications linked against previous libraries. To install an older client library, use the --oldpackage option with rpm. For example, to install mysql-community-libs-5.5 on an EL6 system that has libmysqlclient.21 from MySQL 8.0, use a command like this:

$> rpm --oldpackage -ivh mysql-community-libs-5.5.50-2.el6.x86_64.rpm

Debug Package.  A special variant of MySQL Server compiled with the debug package has been included in the server RPM packages. It performs debugging and memory allocation checks and produces a trace file when the server is running. To use that debug version, start MySQL with /usr/sbin/mysqld-debug, instead of starting it as a service or with /usr/sbin/mysqld. See Section 7.9.4, “The DBUG Package” for the debug options you can use.

Rebuilding RPMs from source SRPMs.  Source code SRPM packages for MySQL are available for download. They can be used as-is to rebuild the MySQL RPMs with the standard rpmbuild tool chain.