- These instructions are intended for creating a MySQL database on Linux via the command line.
- I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed CentOS 6.5 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.
First we’ll login to the MySQL server from the command line with the following command:
mysql -u root -p
In this case, I’ve specified the user root with the -u flag, and then used the -p flag so MySQL prompts for a password. Enter your current password to complete the login.
If you need to change your root (or any other) password in the database, then follow this tutorial on changing a password for MySQL via the command line.
You should now be at a MySQL prompt that looks very similar to this:
mysql>
To create a database with the name tutorial_database type the following command:
CREATE DATABASE tutorial_database;
If a database of the same name already exists, then a new database will not be created and you’ll receive this error:
ERROR 1007 (HY000): Can't create database 'tutorial_database'; database exists
To avoid seeing this error use the following command instead:
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS tutorial_database;
The above command will only create the database tutorial_database if a database of that name does not already exist.
To view the database you’ve created simply issue the following command:
SHOW DATABASES;
Your result should be similar to this:
mysql> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql |
| test |
| tutorial_database |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
