Installing multiple MySQL versions on the same Linux with mysql-sandbox

Ubuntu has a package mysql-sandbox that lets you install multiple MySQL versions into your user home:

1. Install mysql-sandbox

sudo apt install mysql-sandbox

2. Download the version of MySQL you want to use from mysql.com:
   https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/file/?id=480427 Show archive.org snapshot
   Make sure to choose "Generic Linux" instead of "Ubuntu" so you get a .tar.gz instead of .deb

3. cd into the directory the mysql binaries will be extracted to

mkdir -p ~/bin/sandbox_dist
cd ~/bin/sandbox_dist

4. Build the sandbox

make_sandbox mysql-5.7.21-linux-glibc2.12-x86_64.tar.gz

Note that make_sandbox will extract the files into the current folder and expects them to live there forever. That's why we switched to a persistent place like bin/sandbox_dist before.

On older distributions, make_sandbox might be mysql_sandbox instead.

This will install this version into /~/sandboxes/msb_5_7.21. The folder includes a command to start the MySQL daemon for that sandbox. It listens to a non-standard port, so it can run in parallel with your regular MySQL installation.

Note the console output when you install a sandbox. It will show the non-standard port and the username (default root) and password (default msandbox). When working on a Rails project, you need to paste all of that into your config/database.yml.

Connecting to a sandbox

mysql --user=root --password=msandbox --host=127.0.0.1 --port=1234

Replace 1234 with the port for the Sandbox.

Further reading

There is another card that describes how to achieve the same using docker.