MUSL compatibility was broken from 8.0.23 until 8.0.36.
Start a mysql server instance
Starting a MySQL instance is simple:
$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d gtgt/mysql8-alpine:tag
... where some-mysql is the name you want to assign to your container, my-secret-pw is the password to be set for the MySQL root user and tag is the tag specifying the MySQL version you want. See the list above for relevant tags.
The following command starts another mysql container instance and runs the mysql command line client against your original mysql container, allowing you to execute SQL statements against your database instance:
$ docker run -it --network some-network --rm gtgt/mysql8-alpine mysql -hsome-mysql -uexample-user -p
... where some-mysql is the name of your original mysql container (connected to the some-network Docker network).
This image can also be used as a client for non-Docker or remote instances:
$ docker run -it --rm gtgt/mysql8-alpine mysql -hsome.mysql.host -usome-mysql-user -p
More information about the MySQL command line client can be found in the MySQL documentation ... via docker-compose or docker stack deploy
Example docker-compose.yml for mysql:
# Use root/example as user/password credentials
services:
db:
image: gtgt/mysql8-alpine
restart: always
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example # (this is just an example, not intended to be a production configuration)
Run docker stack deploy -c stack.yml mysql (or docker-compose -f stack.yml up), wait for it to initialize completely, and visit http://swarm-ip:8080, http://localhost:8080, or http://host-ip:8080 (as appropriate).
The docker exec command allows you to run commands inside a Docker container. The following command line will give you a ash shell inside your mysql container:
$ docker exec -it some-mysql sh
The log is available through Docker's container log:
$ docker logs some-mysql
The default configuration for MySQL can be found in /etc/mysql/my.cnf, which may !includedir additional directories such as /etc/mysql/conf.d or /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d. Please inspect the relevant files and directories within the mysql image itself for more details.
If /my/custom/config-file.cnf is the path and name of your custom configuration file, you can start your mysql container like this (note that only the directory path of the custom config file is used in this command):
$ docker run --name some-mysql -v /my/custom:/etc/mysql/conf.d -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d gtgt/mysql8-alpine:tag
This will start a new container some-mysql where the MySQL instance uses the combined startup settings from /etc/mysql/my.cnf and /etc/mysql/conf.d/config-file.cnf, with settings from the latter taking precedence.
Many configuration options can be passed as flags to mysqld. This will give you the flexibility to customize the container without needing a cnf file. For example, if you want to change the default encoding and collation for all tables to use UTF-8 (utf8mb4) just run the following:
$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d gtgt/mysql8-alpine:tag --character-set-server=utf8mb4 --collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci
If you would like to see a complete list of available options, just run:
$ docker run -it --rm gtgt/mysql8-alpine:tag --verbose --help
When you start the mysql image, you can adjust the configuration of the MySQL instance by passing one or more environment variables on the docker run command line. Do note that none of the variables below will have any effect if you start the container with a data directory that already contains a database: any pre-existing database will always be left untouched on container startup.
See also https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/environment-variables.html
for documentation of environment variables which MySQL itself respects (especially variables like MYSQL_HOST, which is known to cause issues when used with this image).
This variable is mandatory and specifies the password that will be set for the MySQL root superuser account. In the above example, it was set to my-secret-pw.
This variable is optional and allows you to specify the name of a database to be created on image startup. If a user/password was supplied (see below) then that user will be granted superuser access (corresponding to GRANT ALL) to this database.
These variables are optional, used in conjunction to create a new user and to set that user's password. This user will be granted superuser permissions (see above) for the database specified by the MYSQL_DATABASE variable. Both variables are required for a user to be created.
Do note that there is no need to use this mechanism to create the root superuser, that user gets created by default with the password specified by the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD variable.
This is an optional variable. Set to a non-empty value, like yes, to allow the container to be started with a blank password for the root user. NOTE: Setting this variable to yes is not recommended unless you really know what you are doing, since this will leave your MySQL instance completely unprotected, allowing anyone to gain complete superuser access.
This is an optional variable. Set to a non-empty value, like yes, to generate a random initial password for the root user (using pwgen). The generated root password will be printed to stdout (GENERATED ROOT PASSWORD: .....).
Sets root (not the user specified in MYSQL_USER!) user as expired once init is complete, forcing a password change on first login. Any non-empty value will activate this setting. NOTE: This feature is supported on MySQL 5.6+ only. Using this option on MySQL 5.5 will throw an appropriate error during initialization.
Only initialize database, don't run the service. This will exit and stop your container after initialization.
When a container is started for the first time, a new database with the specified name will be created and initialized with the provided configuration variables. Furthermore, it will execute files with extensions .sh, .sql, .sql.gz and .sql.xz that are found in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d. Files will be executed in alphabetical order. You can easily populate your mysql services by mounting a SQL dump into that directory and provide custom images with contributed data. SQL files will be imported by default to the database specified by the MYSQL_DATABASE variable.
Important note: There are several ways to store data used by applications that run in Docker containers. We encourage users of the mysql images to familiarize themselves with the options available, including:
- Let Docker manage the storage of your database data by writing the database files to disk on the host system using its own internal volume management. This is the default and is easy and fairly transparent to the user. The downside is that the files may be hard to locate for tools and applications that run directly on the host system, i.e. outside containers.
- Create a data directory on the host system (outside the container) and mount this to a directory visible from inside the container. This places the database files in a known location on the host system, and makes it easy for tools and applications on the host system to access the files. The downside is that the user needs to make sure that the directory exists, and that e.g. directory permissions and other security mechanisms on the host system are set up correctly.
The Docker documentation is a good starting point for understanding the different storage options and variations, and there are multiple blogs and forum postings that discuss and give advice in this area. We will simply show the basic procedure here for the latter option above:
-
Create a data directory on a suitable volume on your host system, e.g.
/my/own/datadir. -
Start your mysql container like this:
$ docker run --name some-mysql -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d gtgt/mysql8-alpine:tag
The -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql part of the command mounts the /my/own/datadir directory from the underlying host system as /var/lib/mysql inside the container, where MySQL by default will write its data files.
If there is no database initialized when the container starts, then a default database will be created. While this is the expected behavior, this means that it will not accept incoming connections until such initialization completes. This may cause issues when using automation tools, such as docker-compose, which start several containers simultaneously.
If the application you're trying to connect to MySQL does not handle MySQL downtime or waiting for MySQL to start gracefully, then putting a connect-retry loop before the service starts might be necessary. For an example of such an implementation in the official images, see WordPress or Bonita.
If you start your mysql container instance with a data directory that already contains a database (specifically, a mysql subdirectory), the $MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD variable should be omitted from the run command line; it will in any case be ignored, and the pre-existing database will not be changed in any way.
If you know the permissions of your directory are already set appropriately (such as running against an existing database, as described above) or you have need of running mysqld with a specific UID/GID, it is possible to invoke this image with --user set to any value (other than root/0) in order to achieve the desired access/configuration:
$ mkdir data
$ ls -lnd data
drwxr-xr-x 2 1000 1000 4096 Aug 27 15:54 data
$ docker run -v "$PWD/data":/var/lib/mysql --user 1000:1000 --name some-mysql -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mysql:tag
Most of the normal tools will work, although their usage might be a little convoluted in some cases to ensure they have access to the mysqld server. A simple way to ensure this is to use docker exec and run the tool from the same container, similar to the following:
$ docker exec some-mysql sh -c 'exec mysqldump --all-databases -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD"' > /some/path/on/your/host/all-databases.sql
For restoring data. You can use docker exec command with -i flag, similar to the following:
$ docker exec -i some-mysql sh -c 'exec mysql -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD"' < /some/path/on/your/host/all-databases.sql