How to Install MySQL 5.7 on Oracle Linux 7

Oracle Linux 7 comes with MySQL yum repository pre-installed. By Default MySQL 8 repository is enabled. You can disable MySQL 8 repository and enable MySQL 5.7 repository to install MySQL 5.7.

You can find enabled repositories with command

yum repolist all |  grep -i mysql

Example

[root@sql2 ~]# yum repolist all |  grep -i mysql
ol7_MySQL55/x86_64                      MySQL 5.5 for Oracle Lin disabled
ol7_MySQL56/x86_64                      MySQL 5.6 for Oracle Lin disabled
ol7_MySQL57/x86_64                      MySQL 5.7 for Oracle Lin disabled
ol7_MySQL80/x86_64                      MySQL 8.0 for Oracle Lin enabled:    281
ol7_MySQL80_connectors_community/x86_64 MySQL 8.0 Connectors Com enabled:     56
ol7_MySQL80_tools_community/x86_64      MySQL 8.0 Tools Communit enabled:     15
[root@sql2 ~]#

Let’s disable MySQL 8 repo and enable MySQL 5.7 repository.

yum install -y yum-utils
yum-config-manager --disable ol7_MySQL80 ol7_MySQL80_connectors_community ol7_MySQL80_tools_community
yum-config-manager --enable ol7_MySQL57

Before you can install MySQL 5.7, if your server has any MySQL 8 related packages installed, you need to uninstall them.

On my server, I had the following packages installed.

[root@mysql1 ~]# rpm -qa | grep mysql
mysql-community-client-plugins-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
mysql-community-common-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
mysql-community-libs-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
mysql-release-el7-1.0-5.el7.x86_64
mysql-community-libs-compat-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
[root@mysql1 ~]# 

These are installed as dependency for the postfix mail server, so if you remove the packages with yum, postfix also get removed, so I removed it with command

rpm -e --nodeps mysql-community-client-plugins-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
rpm -e --nodeps mysql-community-common-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
rpm -e --nodeps mysql-community-libs-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64
rpm -e --nodeps mysql-community-libs-compat-8.0.26-1.el7.x86_64

–nodeps option will remove packages without removing dependent packages. Make sure you don’t remove the package mysql-release-el7-1.0-5.

Now you can install MySQL server with command

yum install mysql-community-server

Enable and start MySQL server

systemctl enable mysqld --now

To find MySQL initial password, use

grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log

Login to MySQL server using the temporary password and set a password

mysql -u root -p

Enter the MySQL server temporary password, then execute the following SQL to change the MySQL root password.

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'NEW_MYSQL_ROOT_PW';

NEW_MYSQL_ROOT_PW – replace with your new secure MySQL root password.

You can secure MySQL installation by running

mysql_secure_installation