Compiling a private MySQL installation in your home directory

Yes. For anyone who is interested in building and maintaining their own private MySQL instance, the compilation procedure has changed compared to the old forum post regarding this topic. The new procedure follows.

In order to compile and install a private MySQL instance, you should first create a new Custom Application (listening on port) in the Control Panel. This will reserve a port for your new database server, which your applications will connect to.

Note: we are not using the Custom Application to serve the MySQL instance; it's merely reserving the port. Therefore, you should not attach the application to a website record. If you require remote access to your database, please open a support ticket to ask us to open your MySQL database port in the firewall.

Once the Custom Application (listening on port) has been created, the Control Panel will assign you a port for it. Use that port in the MY_PORT variable below.

Next, you can compile the MySQL instance into ~/mysql using the following commands. This will also install cmake into your ~/bin directory. It is required to build MySQL and you may need it in the future to build other software as well.

#### Begin MySQL Build Commands ####

MY_PORT=47389

mkdir -p ~/mysql/.src
cd ~/mysql/.src
wget http://www.cmake.org/files/v2.8/cmake-2.8.4.tar.gz
tar -xzf cmake-2.8.4.tar.gz
cd cmake-2.8.4
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install

mkdir -p ~/mysql/.src ~/mysql/tmp
cd ~/mysql/.src/
# Download and extract the Mysql source code:
wget 'http://downloads.mysql.com/archives/mysql-5.5/mysql-5.5.12.tar.gz'  # md5 53d31a0b24f3eb3176185090eff129b9
tar -xzf mysql-5.5.12.tar.gz
cd mysql-5.5.12
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/mysql -DMYSQL_TCP_PORT=$MY_PORT -DWITH_INNOBASE_STORAGE_ENGINE=1 .
make
make install

#### End MySQL Build Commands ####

Next, you will need to create the database. This can be done with something like the following commands, substituting your desired password:

#### Begin MySQL Post-Install Setup ####

echo export PATH=$HOME/mysql/bin:$HOME/mysql/scripts:$PATH >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

mysql_install_db --basedir=$HOME/mysql --datadir=$HOME/mysql/data --tmpdir=$HOME/mysql/tmp --user=$USER

# create a my.cnf file
cp $HOME/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf $HOME/mysql/my.cnf

# Start the MySQL Server:
cd $HOME/mysql; mysqld_safe --defaults-file=$HOME/mysql/my.cnf --socket=$HOME/mysql/mysql.sock &

# Choose a password for root:
mysqladmin -u root -P $MY_PORT -S $HOME/mysql/mysql.sock password "aPasswordForRoot"

#### End MySQL Post-Install Setup ####

Next, you can test the server by connecting to it:

mysql -P $MY_PORT -S $HOME/mysql/mysql.sock -u root -p

Finally, you'll need to configure your applications to use the new database server. Specifically, you will need to configure your applications to use the following settings:

• Database host: localhost or 127.0.0.1
• Database port: the port assigned to your custom MySQL app in the control panel
• Database name: the name of the database that you want to use (this must be a database that you created in your custom MySQL, not a database that you created in our control panel)
• Database user: the user for the database that you want to use (this must be a user that you created in your custom MySQL, not a database that you created in our control panel)
• Database password: the password assigned to your database user.

Hope that helps!