Cannot install mysql-server on WSL

Question

I am running Ubuntu 18.04 on WSL and I am trying to install MySQL-server

I keep get the error as displayed on the screenshot attached..I have tried several times to

• apt remove --purge MySQL*
• apt-get autoremove

• apt-get autoclean

• sudo dpkg --configure -a

• sudo apt-get install -f

• sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Any ideas? I keep coming up with the same error.

error output

Answer 1

As per your output, Its looks like package mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.7 but mysql-server-5.7 was not configured properly in previous installation.So you can remove mysql-server-5.7 and its packages and install again.

Removing 'mysql-server-5.7` and its dependencies

sudo dpkg -r mysql-client-5.7
sudo dpkg -r mysql-server-5.7
sudo dpkg -r libmysqlclient20:i386
sudo dpkg -r libmysqlclient20:amd64
sudo dpkg -r libmysqlclient18:amd64
sudo dpkg -r mysql-common

Re-installing mysql-server

sudo apt update
sudo apt install mysql-server
sudo mysql_secure_installation

Answer 2

I had the exact same problem and I took these steps to fix it. If you want the quick TL;DR, just jump to either the step 2 (for MySQL 5.x) or the step 4 (for MySQL 8.x). I just include the other two steps as well to say more about what didn't work for me (but might be still helpful to someone else):

STEP1:

Some people get errors about sockets (just like pipes, sockets are things that make the communication between mysql server and its clients possible) and thus suggest using command line option --protocl=TCP or adding --protocol:tcp to the mysqld.conf to make it use TCP instead of these sockets( which are better for faster local connection ). But there's the error Error writing /etc/mysql/mysqld.conf.d/mysqld.conf: No such file or directory" when I try to save that configuration file (initiated with "sudo nano"). I even cleaned up everything and installed mysql once again from scratch:

sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql /var/lib/mysql
sudo apt-get remove --purge *mariadb*
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt-get install mysql-server

But still even that configuration file doesn't exist for me.

STEP2:

I see that running mysql says mysql.exe: command not found , so I think the main problem is with finding the executable from PATH. But the /etc/bin/mysql exists and also the /etc/bin is in the PATH, so I don't know why I get the command-not-found error when I run the mysql . Anyway, I run the /etc/bin/mysql and it gives yet another error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) Accidentally, I try sudo mysql and all of a sudden it successfully connects to the mysql server and shows the version 5.7. ie, only adding the sudo made it work! I am not a Linux guru but I [used to] think that when sudo is needed, I should get a permission error and not a mysql.exe: command not found .

STEP3:

I'm following a tutorial which is based on MySQL 8. So I think probably upgrading to MySQL version 8 might fix both of my issues(it turns out that the necessity of sudo is not an issue at all, it has to be there normally, if not configured otherwise ). So I follow the instructions in here . I add the MySQL APT repositories to my repository list, and then apt update & re-install the mysql-server. This time, I get a window which asks about the version and I choose version 8. Installation finishes and sudo mysql --version gives mysql Ver 8.0.20 for Linux on x86_64 (MySQL Community Server - GPL) , HOWEVER, this time even sudo mysql gives the error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) . Now even sudo is not helping!

STEP4:

I check the error log in /var/log/mysql/error.log and realize there's a problem with this description: Linux Native AIO interface is not supported on this platform . so I Google it and finally fix my issue with MySQL version 8 installation on WSL using this very helpful comment from @jw-redpanda :

Direct installation of MySQL 8.x will not work on WSL 1 (that's probably the reason why we failed at step 3). It has problem starting the server. Steps below should work:

1. Remove MySQL 8.x:

sudo apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-client
sudo apt-get -y autoremove

2. Change to MySQL 5.x candidate:

sudo dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.8.15-1_all.deb (if you don't have it, get it from here: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/repo/apt/ )

3. Double check current apt policy of MySQL is 5.x:

sudo apt-get update

4. Install MySQL 5.x

sudo service mysql start (this should work without error)

5. Change to MySQL 8.x candidate

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt policy mysql-server (it will show 8.x is the default candidate)

6. Install MySQL 8.x

sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server

7. Modify a script as there is a bug

sudo nano /etc/init.d/mysql
(search for a line ". /usr/share/mysql/mysql-helpers" and change it to
". /usr/share/mysql-8.0/mysql-helpers")

8. Upgrade system tables to MySQL 8.x

sudo service mysql start (this should start without error)
sudo mysql -u root -p

Hope this also works for you!