The OCF provides each user with a MySQL database. Read the following sections for information about performing common MySQL tasks, and our rules and policies regarding MySQL.
The actual server runs MariaDB, which is an active community-driven fork of MySQL. In practice, you shouldn't notice any important differences between the two, though MariaDB does contain some improvements.
We limit users to 1 database, and this database has the same name as your username. As a user of shared database server we ask you to respect the community and refrain from any activities that will hurt the quality of service for other users. We understand this policy is vague, so our suggested maximum size for databases is 1GB, and for individual tables 256 MB. Storing large amounts of data is not a problem unless the server has to perform complex queries on this data.
If you are looking for a familiar phpMyAdmin interface, visit https://pma.ocf.berkeley.edu.
We have two options to create a database using the terminal or our web management tool.
Click here and type in your username and password. Select the
option: makemysql — reset your MySQL database password, or create a new MySQL
database and run the command. Note your password in a safe place.
Log into the OCF via SSH, at the terminal prompt enter
the command makemysql. Hit yes to confirm the operation. Note your password
in a safe place.
To reset a MySQL password simply follow the directions above for creating a MySQL database. This program WILL NOT DELETE an existing database.
Assuming your database is set up, in order to access it (or allow a web application to access it), you will need 4 pieces of information:
Note: Your database password is not the same as your OCF account password. It is a randomly generated password that was created when your database was created. To use your OCF MySQL database with a web application, enter the above information during the application's installation process.
To connect to the OCF's MySQL server using the MySQL client on an OCF machine,
simply run the command: mysql
This command will prompt you for your MySQL database password.
To backup your database (which you should probably do regularly), the basic command to use is
mysqldump [username] > backup
where username denotes your OCF username and backup is the name of the file
you want to dump the contents of your database into. This command will prompt
you for your MySQL password.
To see more options, try running
mysqldump --help
If you need to restore your database from a backup (dump file) you made previously, you simply need to connect to the database and run the SQL commands in the dump file. To do this from the command line, use
mysql -D [username] < backup
where backup is the name of the file that contains the dumped data. As usual, this command will prompt you for your MySQL password.
If you are using MySQL in a script or in another program, you will probably
want to set it up so that the mysql call does not prompt for your password.
While passing the -p option is the obvious way to achieve this, it is also
very insecure because anyone on OCF can see the password while the mysql
command is running. A better approach is to create a ~/.my.cnf file with
proper permissions that contains your MySQL password. To do this, enter the
following commands: make sure you replace dbpasswd with the MySQL password
given to you when you ran makemysql.
touch ~/.my.cnf
cat >> ~/.my.cnf << EOF
[client]
password = dbpasswd
EOF
chmod 600 ~/.my.cnf
And make sure that your .my.cnf has correct permissions by running
$ ls -l ~/.my.cnf
-rw------- 1 staff ocf 64 2005-11-15 16:16 /home/s/st/staff/.my.cnf
Now the mysql command will automatically log you in, so you won't have to memorize or write down your MySQL password.