I often need to install a certain version of MySQL, MariaDB, or Percona Server for MySQL to run some experiments, whether to check for behavior differences or to provide tested instructions. In this blog series, I will look into how you can install MySQL, MariaDB, or Percona Server for MySQL with Docker. This post, part one, is focused on MySQL Server.
Docker is actually not my most preferred way as it does not match a typical production install, and if you look at service control behavior or file layout it is quite different. What is great about Docker though is that it allows installing the latest MySQL version – as well as any other version – very easily.
Docker also is easy to use when you need a simple, single instance. If you’re looking into some replication-related behaviors, DBDeployer may be a better tool for that.
These instructions are designed to get a test instance running quickly and easily; you do not want to use these for production deployments. All instructions below assume Docker is already installed.
First, you should know there are not one but two “official” MySQL Docker Repositories. One of them is maintained by the Docker Team and is available by a simple docker run mysql:latest. The other one is maintained by the MySQL Team at Oracle and would use a docker run mysql/mysql-server:latest syntax. In the examples below, we will use MySQL Team’s Docker images, though the Docker Team’s work in a similar way.
Installing the Latest MySQL Version with Docker
1 2 3 4 | docker run --name mysql-latest \ -p 3306:3306 -p 33060:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:latest |
This will start the latest version of MySQL instance, which can be remotely accessible from anywhere with specified root password. This is easy for testing, but not a good security practice (which is why it is not the default).
Connecting to MySQL Server Docker Container
Installing with Docker means you do not get any tools, utilities, or libraries available on your host directly, so you either install these separately, access created instance from a remote host, or use command lines shipped with docker image.
To Start MySQL Command Line Client with Docker Run:
1 | docker exec -it mysql-latest mysql -uroot -pstrongpassword |
To Start MySQL Shell with Docker Run:
1 | docker exec -it mysql-latest mysqlsh -uroot -pstrongpassword |
Managing MySQL Server in Docker Container
When you want to stop the MySQL Server Docker Container run:
1 | docker stop mysql-latest |
If you want to restart a stopped MySQL Docker container, you should not try to use docker run to start it again. Instead, you should use:
1 | docker start mysql-latest |
If something is not right, for example, if the container is not starting, you can access its logs using this command:
1 | docker logs mysql-latest |
If you want to re-create a fresh docker container from scratch you can run:
1 2 | docker stop mysql-latest docker rm mysql-latest |
Followed by the docker run command described above.
Passing Command Line Options to MySQL Server in Docker Container
If you want to pass some command line options to MySQL Server, you can do it this way:
1 2 3 4 5 6 | docker run --name mysql-latest \ -p 3306:3306 -p 33060:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:latest \ --innodb_buffer_pool_size=256M \ --innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT \ |
Running Different MySQL Server Versions in Docker
If you just want to run one MySQL version at a time in Docker container, it is easy – you can just pick the version you want with Docker Image Tag and change the Name to be different in order to avoid name conflict:
1 2 3 4 | docker run --name mysql-8.0.17 \ -p 3306:3306 -p 33060:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:8.0.17 |
This will start MySQL 8.0.17 in Docker Container.
1 2 3 4 | docker run --name mysql-5.7 \ -p 3306:3306 -p 33060:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:5.7 |
And this will start the latest MySQL 5.7 in Docker.
Running Multiple MySQL Server Versions at the Same Time in Docker
The potential problem of running multiple MySQL Versions in Docker at the same time is TCP port conflict. If you do not access Docker Container from outside, and just run utilities included in the same container, you can just remove port mapping (-p option) and you can run multiple containers:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | docker run --name mysql-latest \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:latest docker run --name mysql-8.0.17 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:8.0.17 |
In more common cases when you need to access Docker containers externally, you will want to map them to use different external port names. For example, to start the latest MySQL 8 at ports 3306/33060 and MySQL 8.0.17 at 3307/33070, we can use:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | docker run --name mysql-latest \ -p 3306:3306 -p 33060:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:latest docker run --name mysql-8.0.17 \ -p 3307:3306 -p 33070:33060 \ -e MYSQL_ROOT_HOST='%' -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD='strongpassword' \ -d mysql/mysql-server:8.0.17 |
There are a lot more things to consider if you’re going to use MySQL on Docker for anything beyond testing. For more information check-out the MySQL Server Page on Docker Hub and MySQL Manual.
> Docker is actually not my most preferred way as it does not match a typical production install
Nowadays it IS a a typical production install