Installing MySQL on OS X Mountain Lion

August 28 2012 • 1 min read

guidemac-os-xmysql

This post was published in 2012 and is kept here for reference. It may contain information that's outdated or inaccurate.

I was having some issues getting MySQL installed on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and then I came across a useful article describing how to do it.

Here’s the important information from the article to install MySQL on OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion using Homebrew:

Install Homebrew

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

Install MySQL using Homebrew

$ brew install mysql

Add MySQL to your LaunchAgents, so it can launch on startup

$ mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
$ cp /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.27/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
$ launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

Unset TMPDIR (as this isn’t set to /tmp for non-root users) and install the MySQL system tables

$ unset TMPDIR
$ mysql_install_db --verbose --user=`whoami` --basedir="$(brew --prefix mysql)" --datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --tmpdir=/tmp

Set the root password for MySQL

$ /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.27/bin/mysqladmin -u root password 'YOUR_NEW_PASSWORD'

And lastly, start MySQL

$ mysql.server start

This post is also available in plain text

Rob Bennet commented September 26, 2012

Thanks for linking to the article. Glad you found it useful!

Pstinghua commented November 27, 2012

thanks, but where is my.cnf? How to config remote access

Sergio Moya commented April 03, 2013

Thanks!! works!

Juan Daniel Flórez commented May 22, 2013

Thanks, I was missing the -w in launchctl that was driving me crazy

angelxmoreno commented February 14, 2014

using mysql_install_db –verbose –user=whoami –basedir=”$(brew –prefix mysql)” –datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql –tmpdir=/tmpI get an error: -bash: mysql_install_db: command not found

Max Glenister