MariaDB development proceeds along multiple development tracks called series . There is a stable series and several maintenance series. Often, there is also a development series. This is similar to the Debian practice of having both a stable and unstable version.

There are two types of MariaDB downloads for Windows: ZIP files and MSI packages. As mentioned previously, the ZIP files are similar to the Linux binary .tar.gz files and they are only recommended for experts who know they want it. If we are starting out with MariaDB on Windows, it is recommended to use the MSI packages. Here are the steps to do just that:

To learn about installing MariaDB on Mac OS X or Linux, read on. Otherwise, feel free to skip to the After the installation section at the end of this chapter.

One of the easiest ways to install MariaDB on Mac OS X is to use Homebrew, which is an Open Source package manager for that platform. Before you can install it, however, you need to prepare your system. The first thing you need to do is install Xcode; Apple's integrated development environment. It's available for free in the Mac App Store.

Once Xcode is installed you can install brew. Full instructions are available on the Brew Project website at http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/ but the basic procedure is to open a terminal and run the following command:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

This command downloads the installer and runs it. Once the initial installation is completed, we run the following command to make sure everything is set up properly:

brew doctor

The output of the doctor command will tell us of any potential issues along with suggestions for how to fix them. Once brew is working properly, you can install MariaDB with the following commands:

brew update
brew install mariadb

Unlike on Linux and Windows, brew does not automatically set up or offer to set up MariaDB to start automatically when your system boots or start MariaDB after installation. To do so, we perform the following command:

ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mariadb/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mariadb.plist

To stop MariaDB, we use the unload command as follows:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mariadb.plist

To learn about installing MariaDB on Linux, read on. Otherwise, skip to the After the installation section at the end of this chapter.

The procedure for installing MariaDB on Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint is easy, and starts with a visit to the Repository Configuration Tool at:

http://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories

This tool is used for APT-based Linux distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Mint, YUM-based Linux distributions such as Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat, and other distributions that have support for MariaDB built-in such as Mageia, Arch Linux, and openSUSE.

Before using the tool you need to know which version of Ubuntu, Debian, or Mint to use. If you do not know, an easy way to find out is with the following command:

cat /etc/lsb-release

Type the command into the terminal and you will get an output similar to the following:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu 
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.04 
DISTRIB_CODENAME=lucid 
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS" 

The output shows that this machine is running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid". So using the Repository Configuration Tool, click on Ubuntu, then 10.04 LTS 'lucid', then on the version or series of MariaDB you want to install. Lastly, click on the mirror you want to use. The tool will then output three pieces of text. The first are the commands to add the MariaDB repository to your system. The second contains the commands to install MariaDB, and the third contains the text and alternate instructions in case adding the repository using the first set of instructions did not work.

For example, the generated commands for adding a repository for MariaDB 10.0 on the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Lucid" and using the osuosl mirror are as follows:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys \
--keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 0xcbcb082a1bb943db 
sudo add-apt-repository \
'deb http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/mariadb/repo/10.0/ubuntu precise main'

The first command installs the python-software-properties package, which contains the helper command we will use. The second command installs the GPG key that is used to sign MariaDB packages. See the MariaDB package security section later in this chapter for more information on this. The third command adds the repository using the add-apt-repository command.

The displayed installation commands are as follows:

sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install mariadb-server

The mariadb-server package depends on the other MariaDB packages, so these two commands are all we need to install MariaDB. Once the second apt-get command finishes, MariaDB will be installed and running. Congratulations!

Jump ahead to the MariaDB package security section if you're interested in the MariaDB signing keys or skip to the After the installation section if you want to start using MariaDB right away.

The procedure for installing MariaDB on Fedora, Red Hat, and CentOS makes use of the Yellowdog Updater, Modified (YUM) package manager. There are two steps: first, create a repo file for MariaDB and second, install MariaDB.

To generate the required text for the repo file, we visit the MariaDB Repository Configuration Tool at: http://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/.

This tool is used for both APT-based Linux distributions such as Debian and Ubuntu, and YUM-based Linux distributions such as Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat.

Click on the distribution we are using, the release available, and the version of MariaDB we want to install. After doing so, contents of the appropriate repo file will be displayed.

For example, the generated text for MariaDB 10.0 on the 64-bit version of CentOS 6 is:

# MariaDB 10.0 CentOS repository list - created 2013-03-09 20:58 UTC 
# http://mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/ 
[mariadb] 
name = MariaDB 
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.0/centos6-amd64 
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB 
gpgcheck=1

The gpgkey line tells YUM where the MariaDB signing key is located. The gpgcheck line directs Yum to always use the signing key to verify the MariaDB packages. The first time we install MariaDB our system will not have the key so Yum will download it and install it. If Yum has never used the key before it will ask for confirmation whether it is OK to import the key. See the MariaDB package security section for more information on the MariaDB signing key.

Copy and paste the generated text from the repository configuration tool into a file using our favorite text editor. Naming the file something descriptive, such as MariaDB.repo, is recommended. Move the file to the /etc/yum.repos.d/ folder using a command similar to the following:

sudo mv -vi MariaDB.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

Once the file is in place, we are ready to install MariaDB. Installing MariaDB from the command line is as simple as:

sudo yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client 

The capitalization of the package names is important. If we type mariadb-server instead of MariaDB-server, we'll get a package cannot be found error.

YUM will gather in all of the dependencies for MariaDB and present us with a list of things we need to install. If we are installing MariaDB on a new system, the list of packages YUM installs because of dependencies could be quite large. The following screenshot shows that there are more than 41 dependent packages that will be installed when we install MariaDB.

After answering y, the installation will get going and we will be prompted to accept the GPG signing key. We verify the fingerprint with y. Yum will then continue downloading and installing MariaDB and will end with a Complete! message.

As a final step of the installation, we start MariaDB with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

If everything has gone well, we will see output similar to the following:

[[email protected] ~]$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start 
Starting MySQL..... SUCCESS!

MariaDB is now installed and running. Congratulations! Jump ahead to the After the installation section or continue on to read about the MariaDB Package Security.

Jump ahead to the MariaDB package security section if you're interested in the MariaDB signing keys or skip to the After the installation section if you want to start using MariaDB right away.

MariaDB is also available on several other Linux distributions and even if no formal packages are provided the MariaDB developers provide generic Linux binaries that work with many versions of Linux. Instructions on how to install and use the generic binaries are available at https://mariadb.com/kb/en/installing-mariadb-binary-tarballs/.

Before installing the binary packages, however, it is worth our while to look in our distribution's package manager to see if MariaDB is already there. For example, Mageia, Arch Linux, openSUSE, and others all include MariaDB in their distributions' repositories. For those Linux distributions (including these three) that the MariaDB developers are familiar with, installation instructions are provided using the MariaDB repository configuration tool (https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/).

The packages provided by the MariaDB developers are signed with a security key so that they can be verified by package managers such as Yum and Apt. The key signing and verification infrastructure on Linux is called Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG). It is a compatible Open Source version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) which is an industry standard data encryption, decryption, and verification system.

The identification number (GPG ID) of the MariaDB signing key is 0xcbcb082a1bb943db. For long-time users of GPG, this ID may seem a little long. That's because until recently, it was common to share a short form of the GPG ID. This is discouraged now because of a GPG's vulnerability; however many utilities will still display the short form by default. The long form of the ID is more secure, so this is what the MariaDB developers share when talking about the key. But, in case we want it, the short form of the ID is 1BB943DB (it's just the last eight characters of the long form ID). For the extra cautious, the full key fingerprint is:

1993 69E5 404B D5FC 7D2F E43B CBCB 082A 1BB9 43DB

The key IDs and fingerprint are also posted in the MariaDB Knowledgebase, which is the official location of the MariaDB documentation and is available at https://mariadb.com/kb/en/gpg/.

By checking the signature of the packages, Linux package managers, and more importantly, we, can verify whether the package that comes from the MariaDB developers and hasn't been tampered with since they created it.

When configuring the MariaDB repository on Debian and Ubuntu, and during the initial MariaDB install on Fedora, Red Hat, and CentOS, an important task is to import the signing key. It's a good idea to verify the key by comparing it to the IDs and the fingerprint when doing so. Thankfully, this is a one-time operation. Once the key is imported the process is fully automatic. We'll only be notified if the signature check fails.

After installing MariaDB, we can quickly test that MariaDB is up and running by opening a terminal or command-line window and running the following command (on Windows we can also open the mysql client .exe in the MariaDB folder):

mysql -u root -p

This command connects to MariaDB as the root user (-u root) and prompts for the password of that user (-p). When prompted, type in the password configured during the install. If no password was set during the install, remove -p. Until a password is set we can connect without a password.

If MariaDB has been successfully installed and started, we should see something similar to the following screenshot when connecting using the previous command to launch the mysql command-line client:

If you get the MariaDB command-line prompt as illustrated in the preceding screenshot, congratulations! You've just installed MariaDB and can successfully connect to the server using the command-line client. You can quit the command-line client for now. Don't worry; we'll come back to it soon.

The MariaDB installers work very well. And they are tested and retested constantly. Occasionally issues with either installing MariaDB or running it for the first time are discovered, but they are almost always fixed promptly so that users are not affected.

If we do happen to run into an issue when trying to start MariaDB, what should we do?

The first thing we should do is look in the error log. The MariaDB error log is either stored with the system logfiles (for example, under /var/log/ on Linux) or in the MariaDB data directory. Common locations for the MariaDB data directory include /var/lib/mysql/ on Linux, C:\Program Files\MariaDB <version>\data\ on Windows (<version> is the version number of MariaDB we are using), and /usr/local/var/mysql/ on Mac OS X. The error logfile itself will either be called mysql.err or hostname.err where hostname is the name we've given our computer. It is also worth noting that the name and location of the logfile can be customized by the my.cnf or my.ini file. The next chapter on configuring MariaDB will go into this file and its location.

Each entry inside the error logfile consists of a timestamp and a description of what went wrong at that timestamp. Sometimes the information given is enough for us to figure it out ourselves, but sometimes we may need to ask for help. We shouldn't feel bad if we can't figure an error out, even experts are sometimes stumped! If we do need to ask for help, the resources listed on the following page, especially the Maria Discuss mailing list and the official IRC channel can help greatly: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/where-are-other-users-and-developers-of-mariadb/

In this chapter we installed MariaDB. Our next task is to configure it, which just so happens to be the subject, and title, of the next chapter.