Adding the MySQL Yum Repository

First, add the MySQL Yum repository to your system's repository list. This is a one-time operation, which can be performed by installing an RPM provided by MySQL. Follow these steps:

Selecting a Release Series

When using the MySQL Yum repository, the latest GA series (currently MySQL 8.0) is selected for installation by default. If this is what you want, you can skip to the next step, Installing MySQL.

Within the MySQL Yum repository, different release series of the MySQL Community Server are hosted in different subrepositories. The subrepository for the latest GA series (currently MySQL 8.0) is enabled by default, and the subrepositories for all other series (for example, the MySQL 8.0 series) are disabled by default. Use this command to see all the subrepositories in the MySQL Yum repository, and see which of them are enabled or disabled (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> yum repolist all | grep mysql

To install the latest release from the latest GA series, no configuration is needed. To install the latest release from a specific series other than the latest GA series, disable the subrepository for the latest GA series and enable the subrepository for the specific series before running the installation command. If your platform supports yum-config-manager, you can do that by issuing these commands, which disable the subrepository for the 5.7 series and enable the one for the 8.0 series:

shell> sudo yum-config-manager --disable mysql57-community
shell> sudo yum-config-manager --enable mysql80-community

For dnf-enabled platforms:

shell> sudo dnf config-manager --disable mysql57-community
shell> sudo dnf config-manager --enable mysql80-community

Besides using yum-config-manager or the dnf config-manager command, you can also select a release series by editing manually the /etc/yum.repos.d/mysql-community.repo file. This is a typical entry for a release series' subrepository in the file:

[mysql57-community]
name=MySQL 5.7 Community Server
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-5.7-community/el/6/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-mysql

Find the entry for the subrepository you want to configure, and edit the enabled option. Specify enabled=0 to disable a subrepository, or enabled=1 to enable a subrepository. For example, to install MySQL 8.0, make sure you have enabled=0 for the above subrepository entry for MySQL 5.7, and have enabled=1 for the entry for the 8.0 series:

# Enable to use MySQL 8.0
[mysql80-community]
name=MySQL 8.0 Community Server
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-8.0-community/el/6/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-mysql

You should only enable subrepository for one release series at any time. When subrepositories for more than one release series are enabled, the latest series will be used by Yum.

Verify that the correct subrepositories have been enabled and disabled by running the following command and checking its output (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> yum repolist enabled | grep mysql

Installing MySQL

Install MySQL by the following command (for dnf-enabled systems, replace yum in the command with dnf):

shell> sudo yum install mysql-community-server

This installs the package for MySQL server (mysql-community-server) and also packages for the components required to run the server, including packages for the client (mysql-community-client), the common error messages and character sets for client and server (mysql-community-common), and the shared client libraries (mysql-community-libs).

Starting the MySQL Server

Start the MySQL server with the following command:

shell> sudo service mysqld start
Starting mysqld:[ OK ]

You can check the status of the MySQL server with the following command:

shell> sudo service mysqld status
mysqld (pid 3066) is running.