MySQL Start and Stop Automatically on RedHat Linux

1. You need to be root to do these steps:

su root

2. Now go to the MySQL directory:

cd /usr/local/mysql

3. First we have to put the start up script with all the others.

cp support-files/mysql.server /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql

4. To make the script be run on machine start up we need to create a symbolic link to it.

cd /etc/rc.d/rc3.d
ln -s ../init.d/mysql S85mysql
cd /etc/rc.d/rc5.d
ln -s ../init.d/mysql S85mysql

5. Now the links to make MySQL shut down:

cd /etc/rc.d/rc0.d
ln -s ../init.d/mysql K85mysql
cd /etc/rc.d/rc6.d
ln -s ../init.d/mysql K85mysql

6. The mysql script must have execute permissions before it will work.

cd ../init.d
chmod +x mysql

7. You may need to change the user that mysql should be run as. Look for the mysqld_user variable about half way through the script and change it to be the appropriate user. If you used our MySQL install instructions the user should be mysql.

8. You can now reboot your machine to test this setup.

shutdown -r now

9. When the machine starts, check that the mysql daemon actually started:

cd /usr/local/mysql
bin/mysqladmin -uroot -p[admin password eg. mypass] ping

Hopefully you get this response:

mysqld is alive

If you get a message like this then something went wrong:

mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server (2)'
Check that mysqld is running and that the socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' exists!