How To Install MySQL on Ubuntu 20.04 [Quickstart]

Introduction

MySQL is an open-source database management system, commonly installed as part of the popular LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack. It implements the relational model and uses Structured Query Language (better known as SQL) to manage its data.

This quickstart tutorial will explain how to install MySQL version 8.0 on an Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you will need:

• One Ubuntu 20.04 server with a non-root administrative user and a firewall configured with UFW. To set up, follow our initial server setup guide for Ubuntu 20.04.

Step 1 — Installing MySQL

To install MySQL, first update your server’s package index if you’ve not done so recently:

sudo apt update

Then install the mysql-server package:

sudo apt install mysql-server

Ensure that MySQL is running:

sudo systemctl start mysql.service

Step 2 — Configuring MySQL

Run MySQL’s included security script with sudo:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

This will take you through a series of prompts where you can make some changes to your MySQL installation’s security options. The first prompt will ask whether you’d like to set up the Validate Password Plugin, which can be used to test the strength of your MySQL password.

If you elect to set up the Validate Password Plugin, the script will ask you to choose a password validation level, with the weakest being 0 and the strongest being 2:

Output
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 password
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

The next prompt will be to enter and confirm a password for the MySQL root user:

Output
Please set the password for root here.


New password: 

Re-enter new password: 

The script will then ask if you want to continue with the password you just entered or if you want to enter a new one. If you’re satisfied with your password, enter Y to continue the script:

Output
Estimated strength of the password: 100 
Do you wish to continue with the password provided?(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y

From there, you can press Y and then ENTER to accept the defaults for all the subsequent questions.

Step 3 — Creating a Dedicated MySQL User and Granting Privileges

Upon installation, MySQL creates a privileged root user account which you can use to manage your database, though it’s best to avoid using this account outside of administrative functions. This step outlines how to use the root MySQL user to create a new user account and grant it privileges.

Connect to the database as the root MySQL user:

sudo mysql

mysql -u root -p

Once you have access to the MySQL prompt, you can create a new user with a CREATE USER statement. These follow this general syntax:

CREATE USER 'username'@'host' IDENTIFIED WITH authentication_plugin BY 'password';

You have several options when it comes to choosing your user’s authentication plugin. The auth_socket plugin mentioned previously can be convenient, as it provides strong security without requiring valid users to enter a password to access the database. But it also prevents remote connections, which can complicate things when external programs need to interact with MySQL.

As an alternative, you can leave out the WITH authentication plugin portion of the syntax entirely to have the user authenticate with MySQL’s default plugin, caching_sha2_password. The following ocmmand creates a user that authenticates with caching_sha2_password. Be sure to change sammy to your preferred username and password to a strong password of your choosing:

CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

ALTER USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

After creating your new user, you can grant them the appropriate privileges.

To illustrate, the following command grants a user global privileges to CREATE, ALTER, and DROP databases, tables, and users, as well as the power to INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE data from any table on the server. It also grants the user the ability to query data with SELECT. Run this GRANT statement, replacing sammy with your own MySQL user’s name, to grant these privileges to your user:

GRANT CREATE, ALTER, DROP, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT on *.* TO 'sammy'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'sammy'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Following this, it’s good practice to run the FLUSH PRIVILEGES command:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Then you can exit the MySQL client:

exit

In the future, to log in as your new MySQL user, you’d use a command like the following:

mysql -u sammy -p

The -p flag will cause the MySQL client to prompt you for your MySQL user’s password in order to authenticate.

Conclusion

You now have a basic MySQL setup installed on your server. Here are a few examples of next steps you can take:

• Set up a LAMP stack or a LEMP stack
• Practice running queries with SQL
• Manage your MySQL installation with phpMyAdmin