How To Install MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, MySQL is the most popular open-source relational database management system. The MySQL source code is freely available because it was originally developed as freeware. MySQL is written in C and C++ and is compatible with all major operating systems. MySQL can be used for a variety of applications but is most commonly found on the popular LAMP and LEMP stacks.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of MySQL on a Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04.

To install the MySQL server run the following commands:

sudo apt install mysql-server

Once complete, you can verify MySQL is installed by running the below command:

sudo systemctl status mysql
sudo systemctl start mysql
sudo systemctl enable mysql

You can confirm that the MySQL client was installed successfully and see what version your system is running with this command:

mysql -V

Step 3. Securing MySQL.

The first thing you’ll want to do after installing your MySQL server is secure it via the following command:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

To log in to MySQL, use the following command (note that it’s the same command you would use to log into a MySQL database):

mysql -u root -p

One of the most important things when running MySQL on a production server is to get the most out of its performance. If you are a beginner and you do not know how to tune your MySQL server, you can start with a program called MySQLTuner. It will help you to analyze your server and to tune MySQL for better overall performance.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed MySQL. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the MySQL server in Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official MySQL website.