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Agvorth
Asked: 2009-07-07 11:15:48 +0800 CST

How do you move MySQL's data directory?

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Our I.T. dept would like me to configure a MySQL server to use a non-default data dir (/data).

We're using MySQL 5.0.45-7.el5 on RHEL 5.

What is the general procedure for doing that?

Are there any caveats or gotchas I should know about before I get started?

What about RHEL's packaging system. Will it be harder to update the MySQL package if the data dir is not in its default location?

mysql redhat

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The easiest thing would be to stop mysql, move the files to the new folder and make a symlink from the default to the new folder.

    If it's a separate drive you can just change the mount point to the default location as well:

    Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2     10154020   1518184   8111716  16% /
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1       101086     15310     80557  16% /boot
tmpfs                  1037808         0   1037808   0% /dev/shm
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5    122510780  43692600  72494596  38% /var/lib/mysql

    EDIT: Here's the line from my /etc/fstab

    LABEL=/var/lib/mysql    /var/lib/mysql          ext3    defaults,noatime,nodiratime        1 2

    You shouldn't have any trouble updating the packages either mounting at the default location, using links or changing the location in the my.cnf file.

    EDIT: Here are the items that you would edit in your my.cnf:

    #basedir = /var/lib/mysql
#datadir = /var/lib/mysql/data/
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