Database Reference
In-Depth Information
The _AMP Alternatives
The followingsections describe different methods for downloading and installing MySQL
or MariaDB for different operating systems, in different formats. An easy method, though,
is to use one of the
_AMP
packages. These letters stand for Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, and
PHP/Perl/Python. Apache is the most popular web server. PHP is the most popular pro-
gramming language used with MySQL. An
AMP
package or stack is based on an operating
system: the Linux stack is called LAMP, the Macintosh stack is called MAMP, and the
Windows stack is called WAMP. If you download and install one of these stacks, it will in-
stall Apache, MySQL, PHP, and any software upon which they depend on your local com-
puter or server. It's a simple, turnkey method. If you install MySQL using a stack installa-
tion, you still need to make some post-installation adjustments. They're explained in the
last section of this chapter. So after installing, skip ahead to it.
Sites for these packages include:
▪ The
Apache XAMPP site
for the latest Linux version (the extra P in LAMPP
stands for Perl). Even though the site calls the package XAMPP instead of
LAMPP, it's the same thing.
▪ The
SourceForge MAMP site
for the latestMac version.
▪ The
EasyPHP WAMP site
for the latest Windows vision.
All of these packages have easy-to-follow installation programs. The default installation
options are usually fine.
Linux Binary Distributions
If your server isrunning on a version of Linux that installs software through the RPM
package format (where RPM originally stood for RedHat Package Manager) or the DEB
package format (where DEB stands for Debian Linux), it is recommended that you use a
binary package instead of a source distribution. Linux binaries are provided based on a few
different Linux distributions: various versions of Red Hat, Debian, SuSE Linux. For all
other distributions of Linux, there are generic Linux packages for installing MySQL. There
are also different versions of a distribution related to the type of processor used by the serv-
er (e.g., 32-bit or 64-bit).
Before proceeding, though, if you have the original installation disks for Linux, you may
be able to use its installation program to easily install MySQL from the disks. In this case,
you can skip the remainder of this section and proceed to
Post-Installation
.
If your installa-
tion disks are old, though, they may not have the latest version of MySQL. So you may
want to install MySQL using the method described in the following paragraphs.
