Switching Between Different Installed MariaDB Versions
Contents
- 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 mariadb.org/download/.
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
~/.my.cnf
file.
- In this case you are probably best off creating a specific section for
MariaDB in your
- Stop mysqld with
/etc/rc.d/mysql stop
ormariadb-admin shutdown
.
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
/usr/local/src/mariadb-5.#
. - Get the source
- Compile the source
- Create the binary tar ball.
You will then be left with a tar file named something like:
mariadb-11.0.1-MariaDB-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Creating a directory structure for the different installations
Install the binary tar files under /usr/local/
with
the following directory names (one for each MariaDB version you want to use), for example:
mariadb-10.5
mariadb-10.6
mariadb-10.11
mariadb-11.0
mariadb-11.1
The above assumes you are just testing major versions of MariaDB. If you are
testing specific versions, use directory names like mariadb-11.0.1
With the directories in place, create a sym-link named mariadb
which points
at the mariadb-XXX
directory you are currently testing. When you want to
switch to testing a different version, just update the sym-link.
Example:
cd /usr/local tar xfz /tmp/mariadb-11.0.1-linux-systemd-x86_64.tar.gz mv -vi mariadb-11.0.1-MariaDB-systemd-linux-x86_64 mariadb-11.0 ln -vs mariadb-11.0 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
directory.
Setting up a common data directory
The steps are:
- Create the
mysql
system user if you don't have it already! (On Linux you do it with theuseradd
command). - Create the directory (we call it
mariadb-data
in the example below) or add a symlink to a directory which is in some other place. - Create the
mysql
permission tables with mariadb-install-db
cd /usr/local/ mkdir mariadb-data cd mariadb ./bin/mariadb-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/mariadb-install-db --no-defaults chown -R mysql mariadb-data mariadb-data/*
This will create a directory data
inside the
current directory.
If you want to use another disk you should do:
cd mariadb ln -s path-to-empty-directory-for-data data ./scripts/mariadb-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-# 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
a ~/.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-11.0] # Options for MariaDB 11.0 [mariadb-11.1] # Options for MariaDB 11.1
If you create an ~/.my.cnf
file, you should start
mysqld
with --defaults-file=~/.my.cnf
instead of --no-defaults
in the examples above.