It is a fact that Apple has migrated itself away from MYSQL. It is also a fact that most people who continue to buy Apple Servers have been using MYSQL for some time and have websites or other content that sill relies on this technology. Just because it is not endorsed or pre-configured by Apple however does not mean that it can not be used. On the contrary installing and configuring MYSQL to run on an OSX Lion server is moderately easy and gives greater insight as to how MYSQL works (If your a novice to intermediate MYSQL user like me). Lets get started with a brief walkthrough of how to install MYSQL on an OSX Lion Server.

Installation & Configuration

1. Download and install the 64-bit 10.6+ version of MYSQL installer package together with the startup files here.

http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/

2. Mount the Disk Image (I mean open/double-click the DMG file) and install MySQL server by double-clicking the PKG file (in my case mysql-5.5.14-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg) and follow onscreen instructions. ( It will ask for Master password, as it installs MySQL server in /usr/local )

Current latest version is 5.5.14 which I’ll be using to install on my server.

Open the DMG and you will see that the first item is the MySQL software, the 2nd item allows MySQL to start when the Mac is booted and the third is a System Preference that allows start/stop operation and a preference to enable it to start on boot. Run all of these.

Once the installs are done you can start the mysql server right from the System Preferences which has a new preference in the “Other” category called “MySQL” click start and now it is running.

To find the MySQL version from the terminal, type at the prompt

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/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -v

If you got the error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’

then mysql was not started, go back to the System Preference and start the database.

3. Run the following commands

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cd /usr/local/mysql
cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf /private/etc/my.cnf
open -e /private/etc/my.cnf

replace “/tmp/mysql.sock” with “/var/mysql/mysql.sock” at two places near the top.
Create a folder called “mysql” (if you don’t already have one) in the /var directory with the right permissions: Read more →