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2.6. Installing MySQL on NetWare

Porting MySQL to NetWare was an effort spearheaded by Novell. Novell customers should be pleased to note that NetWare 6.5 ships with bundled MySQL binaries, complete with an automatic commercial use license for all servers running that version of NetWare.

MySQL for NetWare is compiled using a combination of Metrowerks CodeWarrior for NetWare and special cross-compilation versions of the GNU autotools.

The latest binary packages for NetWare can be obtained at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/. See Section 2.1.3, "How to Get MySQL."

To host MySQL, the NetWare server must meet these requirements:

  • The latest Support Pack of NetWare 6.5 (http://support.novell.com/filefinder/18197/index.html) must be installed.

  • The system must meet Novell's minimum requirements to run the respective version of NetWare.

  • MySQL data and the program binaries must be installed on an NSS volume; traditional volumes are not supported.

To install MySQL for NetWare, use the following procedure:

1.
If you are upgrading from a prior installation, stop the MySQL server. This is done from the server console, using the following command:

SERVER:  mysqladmin -u root shutdown

Note: If the MySQL root user account has a password, you need to invoke mysqladmin with the -p option and supply the password when prompted.

2.
Log on to the target server from a client machine with access to the location where you are installing MySQL.

3.
Extract the binary package Zip file onto the server. Be sure to allow the paths in the Zip file to be used. It is safe to simply extract the file to SYS:\.

If you are upgrading from a prior installation, you may need to copy the data directory (for example, SYS:MYSQL\DATA), as well as my.cnf, if you have customized it. You can then delete the old copy of MySQL.

4.
You might want to rename the directory to something more consistent and easy to use. The examples in this manual use SYS:MYSQL to refer to the installation directory.

Note that MySQL installation on NetWare does not detect if a version of MySQL is already installed outside the NetWare release. Therefore, if you have installed the latest MySQL version from the Web (for example, MySQL 4.1 or later) in SYS:\MYSQL, you must rename the folder before upgrading the NetWare server; otherwise, files in SYS:\MySQL are overwritten by the MySQL version present in NetWare Support Pack.

5.
At the server console, add a search path for the directory containing the MySQL NLMs. For example:

SERVER:  SEARCH ADD SYS:MYSQL\BIN

6.
Initialize the data directory and the grant tables, if necessary, by executing mysql_install_db at the server console.

7.
Start the MySQL server using mysqld_safe at the server console.

8.
To finish the installation, you should also add the following commands to autoexec.ncf. For example, if your MySQL installation is in SYS:MYSQL and you want MySQL to start automatically, you could add these lines:

#Starts the MySQL 5.0.x database server
SEARCH ADD SYS:MYSQL\BIN
MYSQLD_SAFE

If you are running MySQL on NetWare 6.0, we strongly suggest that you use the --skip-external-locking option on the command line:

#Starts the MySQL 5.0.x database server
SEARCH ADD SYS:MYSQL\BIN
MYSQLD_SAFE --skip-external-locking

It is also necessary to use CHECK TABLE and REPAIR TABLE instead of myisamchk, because myisamchk makes use of external locking. External locking is known to have problems on NetWare 6.0; the problem has been eliminated in NetWare 6.5.

mysqld_safe on NetWare provides a screen presence. When you unload (shut down) the mysqld_safe NLM, the screen does not go away by default. Instead, it prompts for user input:

*<NLM has terminated; Press any key to close the screen>*

If you want NetWare to close the screen automatically instead, use the --autoclose option to mysqld_safe. For example:

#Starts the MySQL 5.0.x database server
SEARCH ADD SYS:MYSQL\BIN
MYSQLD_SAFE --autoclose

The behavior of mysqld_safe on NetWare is described further in Section 4.4.1, "mysqld_safeMySQL Server Startup Script."

9.
When installing MySQL, either for the first time or upgrading from a previous version, download and install the latest and appropriate Perl module and PHP extensions for NetWare:

If there was an existing installation of MySQL on the NetWare server, be sure to check for existing MySQL startup commands in autoexec.ncf, and edit or delete them as necessary.

Note: The accounts that are listed in the MySQL grant tables initially have no passwords. After starting the server, you should set up passwords for them using the instructions in Section 2.9, "Post-Installation Setup and Testing."


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