Install MySQL on Red Hat RHEL 8: Detailed Guide

In this guide we will see how to Install MySQL on Red Hat RHEL 8 with dnf, the default package manager for RPM

MySQL is a service we use very often in the Red Hat consulting, being the basis for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), LEMP (Linux, NginX, MySQL, PHP) web stacks and many others, which are needed for CMS, web applications and e-Commerce

Installing MySQL on Red Hat RHEL 8

As a first step we update Red Hat RHEL 8 packages with the dnf handler:

sudo dnf upgrade

We proceed to install MySQL with dnf install:

sudo dnf install mysql-server

We accept the installation of the necessary packages

Enabling module streams:
 mysql 8.0
 perl 5.26
 perl-IO-Socket-SSL 2.066
 perl-libww-perl 6.34
Transaction Summary
======================================================
Install 55 Packages
Total download size: 64 M
Installed size: 290 M
Is this ok [y/N]: Y

Check if the mysql process is active

sudo systemctl status mysqld

● mysqld.service - MySQL 8.0 database server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysqld.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

In case it is not active we can restart MySQL and repeat the previous check

sudo systemctl restart mysqld.service

sudo systemctl status mysqld

● mysqld.service - MySQL 8.0 database server
    Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mysqld.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
    Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-08-10 09:44:42 UTC; 32s ago

We auto-start on MySQL boot

sudo systemctl enable mysqld

Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/mysqld.service → /usr/lib/systemd/system/mysqld.service.

We check the default MySQL port, TCP 3306, which should be listening at this point

sudo dnf install net-tools

sudo netstat -tnplu |grep 3306

The command should return the following output, showing port 3306 listening locally

tcp6 0 0 :::3306 :::* LISTEN 76796/mysqld
tcp6 0 0 :::33060 :::* LISTEN 76796/mysqld 

Configure MySQL

The next step to Install MySQL on Red Hat RHEL 8, is to configure MySQL. At first startup, the configurations used by default have poor security. To improve security, it is recommended to run the DBMS configuration script, set MySQL authentication, and remove anonymous logins

sudo mysql_secure_installation

The script will guide us in configuring the server security options.

First we enable password control for users, and select strong passwords, with dictionary search of common passwords

Securing the MySQL server deployment.
Connecting to MySQL using a blank password.
VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of passwords
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component?
Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: Y

There are three levels of password validation policy:
LOW Length >= 8
MEDIUM Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, and special characters
STRONG Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, special characters and dictionary file
Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG: 2

Enter password for user root

New password:
Re-enter new password:
Estimated strength of the password: 90
Do you wish to continue with the password provided?
(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

Remove anonymous users, to increase security

By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.
Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

Configure local user authentication root, which will be via socket, only on the local machine

Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.
Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

Disallow test databases

By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.
Remove test database and access to it?
(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

Let's reload the privilege tables, so that our changes will take effect immediately.

Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.
Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

All done!

Login to MySQL from console

The installation is finished and we can log in with user root and previous password from our server console

sudo mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

As a test we can list the databases present

show databases;

+--------------------+
| Databases |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql |
| performance_schema |
| sys |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The output shows us the databases present, we were able to Install MySQL on Red Hat RHEL 8, we can use with the usual syntax our MySQL, connect our web apps and CMS

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Change password of root of MySQL

In case we want to reset password of root of MySQL. We can use this command, we recommend using a "strong" password, with numbers, upper and lower case and special characters.

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'LA_MIA_PASSWORD';

Accessing remote MySQL

To access a remote MySQL it is recommended to use an SSH tunnel by redirecting the remote 3306 port of our server, which only listens in localhost, to our local 33006 port

ssh root@IP-o-DNS -L 33006:localhost:3306

Thanks to the tunnel we could connect directly to our port 33006 in localhost or 127.0.0.1 with the root credentials created before

For that we can use one of these commands:

mysql -h localhost -P 33006 -u root -p

mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -P 33006 -u root -p