Background
It follows the relational paradigm and manages its data via Structured Query Language (SQL).
What you need
You will need the following items to complete this tutorial:
One Ubuntu 20.04 server with a non-root administrative account and a UFW firewall. Follow our introductory server setup instructions for Ubuntu 20.04 to get started.
You may also experiment with installing and configuring MySQL in this tutorial using an interactive terminal integrated on this page.
1: Install MySQL
MySQL may be installed on Ubuntu 20.04 by utilizing the APT package repository. The version of MySQL available in the default Ubuntu repository at the time of writing is 8.0.27.
To install it, if you haven’t already, update your server’s package index:
sudo apt update
Then install the mysql-server package:
sudo apt install mysql-server
Ensure that the server is running using the systemctl start command:
sudo systemctl start mysql.service
These commands will install and start MySQL, but will not prompt you to set a password or make any other configuration changes. Because this leaves your installation of MySQL insecure, we will address this next.
2: Configuration of MySQL
For fresh installations of MySQL, you’ll want to run the DBMS’s included security script. This script changes some of the less secure default options for things like remote root logins and sample users.
Run the security script with sudo:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
This will take you through a series of prompts where you can make some changes to your MySQL installation’s security options. The first prompt will ask whether you’d like to set up the Validate Password Plugin, which can be used to test the password strength of new MySQL users before deeming them valid.
If you elect to set up the Validate Password Plugin, any MySQL user you create that authenticates with a password will be required to have a password that satisfies the policy you select. The strongest policy level — which you can select by entering 2 — will require passwords to be at least eight characters long and include a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numeric, and special characters:
Output
Securing the MySQL server deployment.
Connecting to MySQL using a blank password.
VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
and improve security.It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component?
Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: Y
There are three levels of password validation policy:
LOW Length >= 8
MEDIUM Length >= 8,
numeric, mixed case, and special characters
STRONG Length >= 8, numeric, mixed case, special characters and dictionary
Please enter 0 = LOW, 1 = MEDIUM and 2 = STRONG:
2
Regardless of whether you choose to set up the Validate Password Plugin, the next prompt will be to set a password for the MySQL root user. Enter and then confirm a secure password of your choice:
Output
Please set the password for root here.
New password:
Re-enter new password:
Note that even though you’ve set a password for the root MySQL user, this user is not currently configured to authenticate with a password when connecting to the MySQL shell.
If you used the Validate Password Plugin, you’ll receive feedback on the strength of your new password. Then the script will ask if you want to continue with the password you just entered or if you want to enter a new one. Assuming you’re satisfied with the strength of the password you just entered, enter Y to continue the script:
Output
Estimated strength of the password: 100
Do you wish to continue with the password provided?(Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
From there, you can press Y and then ENTER to accept the defaults for all the subsequent questions. This will remove some anonymous users and the test database, disable remote root logins, and load these new rules so that MySQL immediately respects the changes you have made.
Once the script completes, your MySQL installation will be secured. You can now move on to creating a dedicated database user with the MySQL client.
3 — Creating a Dedicated MySQL User and Granting Privileges
Upon installation, MySQL creates a root user account which you can use to manage your database. This user has full privileges over the MySQL server, meaning it has complete control over every database, table, user, and so on. Because of this, it’s best to avoid using this account outside of administrative functions. This step outlines how to use the root MySQL user to create a new user account and grant it privileges.
In Ubuntu systems running MySQL 5.7 (and later versions), the root MySQL user is set to authenticate using the auth_socket plugin by default rather than with a password. This plugin requires that the name of the operating system user that invokes the MySQL client matches the name of the MySQL user specified in the command, so you must invoke mysql with sudo privileges to gain access to the root MySQL user:
sudo mysql
Once you have access to the MySQL prompt, you can create a new user with a CREATE USER statement. These follow this general syntax:
mysql> CREATE USER 'username'@'host' IDENTIFIED WITH authentication_plugin BY 'password';
After CREATE USER, you specify a username. This is immediately followed by an @ sign and then the hostname from which this user will connect. If you only plan to access this user locally from your Ubuntu server, you can specify localhost. Wrapping both the username and host in single quotes isn’t always necessary, but doing so can help to prevent errors.
You have several options when it comes to choosing your user’s authentication plugin. The auth_socket plugin mentioned previously can be convenient, as it provides strong security without requiring valid users to enter a password to access the database. But it also prevents remote connections, which can complicate things when external programs need to interact with MySQL.
As an alternative, you can leave out the WITH authentication_plugin
portion of the syntax entirely to have the user authenticate with MySQL’s default plugin, caching_sha2_password.
Run the following command to create a user that authenticates with caching_sha2_password. Be sure to change sammy to your preferred username and password to a strong password of your choosing:
mysql> CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
Note: There is a known issue with some versions of PHP that causes problems with caching_sha2_password. If you plan to use this database with a PHP application — phpMyAdmin, for example — you may want to create a user that will authenticate with the older, though still secure, mysql_native_password plugin instead:
mysql> CREATE USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
If you aren’t sure, you can always create a user that authenticates with caching_sha2_plugin and then ALTER it later on with this command:
mysql> ALTER USER 'sammy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';
After creating your new user, you can grant them the appropriate privileges. The general syntax for granting user privileges is as follows:
mysql> GRANT PRIVILEGE ON database.table TO 'username'@'host';
The PRIVILEGE value in this example syntax defines what actions the user is allowed to perform on the specified database and table. You can grant multiple privileges to the same user in one command by separating each with a comma. You can also grant a user privileges globally by entering asterisks (*) in place of the database and table names. In SQL, asterisks are special characters used to represent “all” databases or tables.
To illustrate, the following command grants a user global privileges to CREATE
, ALTER
, and DROP
databases, tables, and users, as well as the power to INSERT
, UPDATE
, and DELETE
data from any table on the server. It also grants the user the ability to query data with SELECT
, create foreign keys with the REFERENCES
keyword, and perform FLUSH
operations with the RELOAD
privilege. However, you should only grant users the permissions they need, so feel free to adjust your own user’s privileges as necessary.
You can find the full list of available privileges in the official MySQL documentation.
Run this GRANT
statement, replacing sammy
with your own MySQL user’s name, to grant these privileges to your user:
GRANT CREATE, ALTER, DROP, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, SELECT, REFERENCES, RELOAD on *.* TO 'sammy'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Note that this statement also includes WITH GRANT OPTION
. This will allow your MySQL user to grant any permissions that it has to other users on the system.
Warning: Some users may want to grant their MySQL user the ALL PRIVILEGES
privilege, which will provide them with broad superuser privileges akin to the root user’s privileges, like so:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'sammy'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
Following this, it’s good practice to run the FLUSH PRIVILEGES
command. This will free up any memory that the server cached as a result of the preceding CREATE USER
and GRANT
statements:
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
The -p
flag will cause the MySQL client to prompt you for your MySQL user’s password in order to authenticate.
Finally, let’s test the MySQL installation.
4 — Testing MySQL
Regardless of how you installed it, MySQL should have started running automatically. To test this, check its status.
systemctl status mysql.service
You’ll see output similar to the following:
● mysql.service - MySQL Community Server Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Tue 2020-04-21 12:56:48 UTC; 6min ago Main PID: 10382 (mysqld) Status: "Server is operational" Tasks: 39 (limit: 1137) Memory: 370.0M CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service └─10382 /usr/sbin/mysqld
If MySQL isn’t running, you can start it with
sudo systemctl start mysql
.
For an additional check, you can try connecting to the database using the mysqladmin
tool, which is a client that lets you run administrative commands. For example, this command says to connect as a MySQL user named sammy (-u sammy
), prompt for a password (-p
), and return the version. Be sure to change sammy
to the name of your dedicated MySQL user, and enter that user’s password when prompted:
sudo mysqladmin -p -u sammy version
You should see output similar to this:
Outputmysqladmin Ver 8.0.19-0ubuntu5 for Linux on x86_64 ((Ubuntu)) Copyright (c) 2000, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Server version 8.0.19-0ubuntu5 Protocol version 10 Connection Localhost via UNIX socket UNIX socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Uptime: 10 min 44 sec Threads: 2 Questions: 25 Slow queries: 0 Opens: 149 Flush tables: 3 Open tables: 69 Queries per second avg: 0.038
This means MySQL is up and running.