2.9.2.2. Starting and Stopping MySQL Automatically
Generally, you start the mysqld server in
one of these ways:
By invoking mysqld directly. This works
on any platform.
By running the MySQL server as a Windows service. This can
be done on versions of Windows that support services (such
as NT, 2000, XP, and 2003). The service can be set to
start the server automatically when Windows starts, or as
a manual service that you start on request. For
instructions, see Section 2.3.11, “Starting MySQL as a Windows Service”.
By invoking mysqld_safe, which tries to
determine the proper options for mysqld
and then runs it with those options. This script is used
on Unix and Unix-like systems. See
Section 5.3.1, “mysqld_safe — MySQL Server Startup Script”.
By invoking mysql.server. This script
is used primarily at system startup and shutdown on
systems that use System V-style run directories, where it
usually is installed under the name
mysql
. The
mysql.server script starts the server
by invoking mysqld_safe. See
Section 5.3.2, “mysql.server — MySQL Server Startup Script”.
On Mac OS X, you can install a separate MySQL Startup Item
package to enable the automatic startup of MySQL on system
startup. The Startup Item starts the server by invoking
mysql.server. See
Section 2.5, “Installing MySQL on Mac OS X”, for details.
The mysqld_safe and
mysql.server scripts and the Mac OS X
Startup Item can be used to start the server manually, or
automatically at system startup time.
mysql.server and the Startup Item also can
be used to stop the server.
To start or stop the server manually using the
mysql.server script, invoke it with
start
or stop
arguments:
shell> mysql.server start
shell> mysql.server stop
Before mysql.server starts the server, it
changes location to the MySQL installation directory, and then
invokes mysqld_safe. If you want the server
to run as some specific user, add an appropriate
user
option to the
[mysqld]
group of the
/etc/my.cnf
option file, as shown later
in this section. (It is possible that you will need to edit
mysql.server if you've installed a binary
distribution of MySQL in a non-standard location. Modify it to
cd
into the proper directory before it runs
mysqld_safe. If you do this, your modified
version of mysql.server may be overwritten
if you upgrade MySQL in the future, so you should make a copy
of your edited version that you can reinstall.)
mysql.server stop stops the server by
sending a signal to it. You can also stop the server manually
by executing mysqladmin shutdown.
To start and stop MySQL automatically on your server, you need
to add start and stop commands to the appropriate places in
your /etc/rc*
files.
If you use the Linux server RPM package
(MySQL-server-VERSION
.rpm
),
the mysql.server script is installed in the
/etc/init.d
directory with the name
mysql
. You need not install it manually.
See Section 2.4, “Installing MySQL on Linux”, for more information on the
Linux RPM packages.
Some vendors provide RPM packages that install a startup
script under a different name such as
mysqld.
If you install MySQL from a source distribution or using a
binary distribution format that does not install
mysql.server automatically, you can install
it manually. The script can be found in the
support-files
directory under the MySQL
installation directory or in a MySQL source tree.
To install mysql.server manually, copy it
to the /etc/init.d
directory with the
name mysql, and then make it executable. Do
this by changing location into the appropriate directory where
mysql.server is located and executing these
commands:
shell> cp mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql
shell> chmod +x /etc/init.d/mysql
Older Red Hat systems use the
/etc/rc.d/init.d
directory rather than
/etc/init.d
. Adjust the preceding
commands accordingly. Alternatively, first create
/etc/init.d
as a symbolic link that
points to /etc/rc.d/init.d
:
shell> cd /etc
shell> ln -s rc.d/init.d .
After installing the script, the commands needed to activate
it to run at system startup depend on your operating system.
On Linux, you can use chkconfig
:
shell> chkconfig --add mysql
On some Linux systems, the following command also seems to be
necessary to fully enable the mysql script:
shell> chkconfig --level 345 mysql on
On FreeBSD, startup scripts generally should go in
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/
. The
rc(8)
manual page states that scripts in
this directory are executed only if their basename matches the
*.sh
shell filename pattern. Any other
files or directories present within the directory are silently
ignored. In other words, on FreeBSD, you should install the
mysql.server
script as
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql.server.sh
to
enable automatic startup.
As an alternative to the preceding setup, some operating
systems also use /etc/rc.local
or
/etc/init.d/boot.local
to start
additional services on startup. To start up MySQL using this
method, you could append a command like the one following to
the appropriate startup file:
/bin/sh -c 'cd /usr/local/mysql; ./bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &'
For other systems, consult your operating system documentation
to see how to install startup scripts.
You can add options for mysql.server in a
global /etc/my.cnf
file. A typical
/etc/my.cnf
file might look like this:
[mysqld]
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/var
socket=/var/tmp/mysql.sock
port=3306
user=mysql
[mysql.server]
basedir=/usr/local/mysql
The mysql.server script understands the
following options: basedir
,
datadir
, and pid-file
.
If specified, they must be placed in an
option file, not on the command line.
mysql.server understands only
start
and stop
as
command-line arguments.
The following table shows which option groups the server and
each startup script read from option files:
[mysqld-major_version
]
means that groups with names like
[mysqld-5.0]
and
[mysqld-5.1]
are read by
servers having versions 5.0.x,
5.1.x, and so forth. This feature can be used to
specify options that can be read only by servers within a
given release series.
For backward compatibility, mysql.server
also reads the [mysql_server]
group and
mysqld_safe also reads the
[safe_mysqld]
group. However, you should
update your option files to use the
[mysql.server]
and
[mysqld_safe]
groups instead when using
MySQL 5.1.
See Section 4.3.2, “Using Option Files”.