Installing MySQL - Learning MySQL - page 29

If you have superuser privileges and want your MySQL installation to be system-wide,
it's best to install to a directory under the /usr/local directory—for example, /usr/local/
mysql-5.0.22 . On the other hand, if you want to run a local server, you can have the
MySQL directory wherever you wish—for example, under your own home directory
at ~/mysql-5.0.22 .
To install MySQL to the directory /usr/local/mysql-5.0.22 , we call the configure com-
mand with the target as follows:
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql-5.0.22
If all is not well, you may see some error messages. Problems during configuration are
generally due to Linux programs and libraries missing from your system; read the error
messages carefully to identify the cause of the problem.
If the configuration is successful, you can use the make command to compile the files:
$ make
The compilation process may take a long time.
You need to use the GNU variant of the make program ( http://www.gnu
.org/software/make ). The make command on most Linux systems is in
fact the GNU make program; if you run into problems when using
make , it might not be GNU make , and the problem may be resolved by
using the gmake (GNU make) command instead.
When it's done, you need to install the files to the directory you specified earlier. If
you've chosen to install a local server, you can simply type:
$ make install
If—as in our example—you've specified a prefix path that you can't normally write to
as an ordinary user, you'll need to first log in as root:
$ su -
and then run make install from the root prompt to copy the compiled files to the target
installation directory:
# make install
If all goes well, the MySQL files will be installed in the correct directory. You'll often
find it helpful to create a link to refer to this directory easily. For example, for a system-
wide server, you can make the link /usr/local/mysql to point to the /usr/local/
mysql-5.0.22 directory:
# ln --symbolic /usr/local/mysql-5.0.22 /usr/local/mysql
Now you can simply refer to the MySQL directory as /usr/local/mysql . Similarly, if
you specified the path /home/adam/mysql-5.0.22 for a local installation, you can make
the link ~/mysql to point to the ~/mysql-5.0.22 directory: