For security reasons, running the server as an unprivileged user and group is strongly encouraged: groupadd mysql && useradd -c mysql -d /dev/null -g mysql -s /bin/false mysql Build and install MySQL by running the following commands: ./configure --prefix=/usr \ --sysconfdir=/etc \ --libexecdir=/usr/sbin \ --localstatedir=/var/lib/mysql \ --enable-thread-safe-client \ --enable-local-infile \ --enable-assembler \ --without-debug \ --without-bench && make testdir=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-test && make testdir=/usr/lib/mysql/mysql-test install Packages that depend on MySQL need the shared libraries available at run-time: ln -s /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient{,_r}.so* /usr/lib