Russell Beattie Notebook

Many binary distributors of MySQL mold it to fit "their" layout. For example, the Debian distribution places the config files in /etc/mysql/, some language-specific files in /usr/share/mysql/, the executables directly into /usr/bin/, etc. It's not "the Debian way" to segregate an application's binaries; it incorporates them into the system as a whole. Likewise, in those places it does incorporate them, it does so in what may seem like an odd manner. For instance, you might expect config files to go directly into /etc/, but instead they get put in /etc/mysql/. It can be confusing if you're trying to find everything you need to modify, or if you're trying to later convert from one type of installation to the other.

The MySQL.com-supplied tarball binary packages, however, behave more like the source-compilation process. All the files - configuration files, libraries, executables, and the database files themselves - end up in a single directory tree, created specifically for the MySQL install. This is typically /usr/local/mysql, but it can be altered as needed at installation time. Because this behavior is much the same as a source-compiled installation, the available support from the MySQL community is much greater. It also makes things easier if you decide later to instead use a MySQL installation you compile from source.