This step by step tutorial is everything you need to install MySQL 5.1 (from source) on a virgin FreeBSD 4.x - 7.x machine.

Step 1: Install wget


Step 2: Download MySQL 5.1 source code


Step 3: Create mysql user


Follow the prompts to create a mysql user and mysql group with a default directory of /usr/local/mysql

Step 4: Compile and Install MySQL with InnoDB support


Step 5: Install default MySQL tables


Step 6: Startup MySQL and connect to it


Step 7: Set MySQL to start automatically when the machine reboots

Save the file below under /usr/local/etc/rc.d and call it mysqlstart.sh


Mark it as an executable


Step 8: Customizations

The following steps are optional.

By this point you should have MySQL installed and running on your new FreeBSD machine.

The customizations below are things that we do here at SoftwareProjects and are designed to get the most juice out of MySQL 5.1 in our environment.
All of our MySQL database machines run on FreeBSD 6/7 with a minimum of 4GB memory.

Shutdown the MySQL database


Move the data directory to /usr/local/mysql/data


Save our custom MySQL configuration file under /etc/my.cnf

Note: Be sure to assign a unique server-id and note the auto-increment field - this is useful for master/master setups.

Step 9: Lift process size restrictions

FreeBSD limits process max size in memory to 512MB. We're going to want to use more for MySQL.

To lift FreeBSD process size restrictions, we have to update /boot/loader.conf with:



And then reboot the machine

Step 10: Populate database with data

Typically when we install a new database server, we want to populate it with data from another database.

The absolute easiest way to populate a secondary MySQL database machine with data from another MySQL database, is by using a script called InnoDBBackup by the makers of InnoDB.

Install both ibbackup and the Perl innobackup script on the master database machine (the one you are looking to transfer data from)

create a backup of the database (the great thing about this is you never have to take the database down):


Once the backup completes, transfer all the data over from the master to this new machine we are setting up -

On the new machine we are setting up, create a new directory to hold the backup:


On the master machine, issue this tar command:


Once the tar is done, copy ibbackup and innobackup to the destination machine under /usr/tmp and run these two commands:


Replace the 2008-05-02... with the name of your backup folder

./configure --with-plugins=innobase

Thanks for clear description. If I am updating to a new version of MySQL, instead of installing from scratch, how would the above be modified in order to preserve existing database contents. Thanks

Important: If you have a lot of databases, you may get "Too many open files" EMFILE error 24.

To fix this, you need to increase the number of file descriptors.

Update your /etc/sysctl.conf with the settings below and reboot the machine before retrying:

Here's a pretty good live backup procedure for mysql under FreeBSD. Dont known if it work with linux.

https://dev.mantor.org/doku.php?id=mysqlbackup