Install MySQL with Docker container

Start a mysql server instance

Starting a MySQL instance is simple:

$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mysql:tag

Where some-mysql is the name you want to assign to your container, my-secret-pw is the password to be set for the MySQL root user and tag is the tag specifying the MySQL version you want.

Connect to MySQL from the MySQL command line client

The following command starts another mysql container instance and runs the mysql command line client against your original mysql container, allowing you to execute SQL statements against your database instance:

$ docker run -it --network some-network --rm mysql mysql -hsome-mysql -uexample-user -p

Where some-mysql is the name of your original mysql container (connected to the some-network Docker network).

This image can also be used as a client for non-Docker or remote instances:

$ docker run -it --rm mysql mysql -hsome.mysql.host -usome-mysql-user -p

Via docker-compose or docker stack deploy

Example docker-compose.yml for mysql:

# Use root/example as user/password credentials
version: '3.1'

services:

  db:
    image: mysql
    # NOTE: use of "mysql_native_password" is not recommended: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/upgrading-from-previous-series.html#upgrade-caching-sha2-password
    # (this is just an example, not intended to be a production configuration)
    command: --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example

  adminer:
    image: adminer
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:808

Try in Play With Docker

Run docker stack deploy -c stack.yml mysql (or docker-compose -f stack.yml up), wait for it to initialize completely, and visit http://swarm-ip:8080, http://localhost:8080, or http://host-ip:8080 (as appropriate).

Container shell access and viewing MySQL logs

The docker exec command allows you to run commands inside a Docker container. The following command line will give you a bash shell inside your mysql container:

$ docker exec -it some-mysql bash

The log is available through Docker's container log:

$ docker logs some-mysql

Using a custom MySQL configuration file

The default configuration for MySQL can be found in /etc/mysql/my.cnf, which may !includedir additional directories such as /etc/mysql/conf.d or /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d. Please inspect the relevant files and directories within the mysql image itself for more details.

If /my/custom/config-file.cnf is the path and name of your custom configuration file, you can start your mysql container like this (note that only the directory path of the custom config file is used in this command):

$ docker run --name some-mysql -v /my/custom:/etc/mysql/conf.d -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mysql:tag

This will start a new container some-mysql where the MySQL instance uses the combined startup settings from /etc/mysql/my.cnf and /etc/mysql/conf.d/config-file.cnf, with settings from the latter taking precedence.

Configuration without a cnf file

Many configuration options can be passed as flags to mysqld. This will give you the flexibility to customize the container without needing a cnf file. For example, if you want to change the default encoding and collation for all tables to use UTF-8 (utf8mb4) just run the following:

$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mysql:tag --character-set-server=utf8mb4 --collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci

If you would like to see a complete list of available options, just run:

$ docker run -it --rm mysql:tag --verbose --help

Reference Links

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