Install MySQL on Ubuntu without a password prompt

Question

How do I write a script to install MySQL server on Ubuntu?

sudo apt-get install mysql will install, but it will also ask for a password to be entered in the console.

How do I do this in a non-interactive way? That is, write a script that can provide the password?

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt-get install mysql  # To install MySQL server

# How to write script for assigning password to MySQL root user
# End

Pitch

duplicate: #1202847 – Minority

Answer 1

sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password your_password'
sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again password your_password'
sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server

For specific versions, such as mysql-server-5.6, you'll need to specify the version in like this:

sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server-5.6 mysql-server/root_password password your_password'
sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server-5.6 mysql-server/root_password_again password your_password'
sudo apt-get -y install mysql-server-5.6

For mysql-community-server, the keys are slightly different:

sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-community-server mysql-community-server/root-pass password your_password'
sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-community-server mysql-community-server/re-root-pass password your_password'
sudo apt-get -y install mysql-community-server

Replace your_password with the desired root password. (it seems your_password can also be left blank for a blank root password.)

If you writing a script then your shell may be not bash but dash/ash or some basic unix shell. These shells, unlike zsh, ksh93 and bash, doesn't support here-strings <<<. So you should use:

echo ... | sudo debconf-set-selections 

Or a more readable print of multiline strings:

cat << EOF | sudo debconf-set-selections
mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password your_password
mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again password your_password
EOF

You can check with debconf-get-selections command:

$ sudo debconf-get-selections | grep ^mysql
mysql-server    mysql-server/root_password_again    password    your_password
mysql-server    mysql-server/root_password  password    your_password

Specialist

Make sure to change the mysql-server-5.1 part to the current mysql version! – Nearby

I used this with capistrano but had to change the shell form sh to bash using the answer here #7748259 – Androcles

Running echo ... | sudo ... is bad, since it will leave the password in the shell history of the unprivileged user. There are ways around this though, of course. – Superincumbent

In fact, doesn't using here-strings give you the same vulnerability? This is a case where using sudo -i and then running debconf-set-selections directly from the root prompt is safer. Or you can go a really convoluted way round to avoid that but is also safe. – Superincumbent

This Answer translates to MariaDB as follows by replacing mysql-server-<version> with maria-db-<server>. The following occurency of mysql-server/ remains untouched – Mollymollycoddle

-<version> part is unnecessary - works like a charm for me, and is more generic without that. – Hostage

This doesn't work for me if I want to keep a blank password on a dev box. – Raney

This works fine with after sudo apt-get install debconf-utils – Genia

Commenting here for future self. In my case, I had to use the 'echo' method while using a bamboo instance for automating deployments and general git-merge-fu. – Untimely

This didn't initally work for me, but it did work after performing a sudo apt-get update; apt-get -y upgrade – Homely

This is great! It works and thanks. But how did you discover this? – Jaqitsch

@Mollymollycoddle for MariaDB, the package is mariadb-server, not maria-db-server. Thanks for the note anyway. – Murielmurielle

I tried sudo debconf-set-selections <<< 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password root' and am getting the error message: sh: 2: Syntax error: redirection unexpected – Moir

Try this instead and let us know if it works: printf 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password password your_password' | sudo debconf-set-selection and printf 'mysql-server mysql-server/root_password_again password your_password' | sudo debconf-set-selection – Specialist

@DimitreRadoulov Yes, that worked - I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 :) Thanks. Note that there is a typo in your comment, "s" is missing at the ends of debconf-set-selections. – Moir

Should these be unset in some way afterwards for safety? – Moquette

Hi @janw, yes, see this post. – Specialist

Just FYI, because I got stuck on this for amlost an hour: You have to actually set a password. An empty string will not work! It has to be something. – Neper

I don't know why this didn't worked for me. I tried every way possible described above and in other answers but the password always stays empty, I even check the deb-set-selections value and they are there correctly. I ended up doing something like this, to first connect using a default file and then changing the password: #46956193 . Ps: I'm installing mysql in Circleci, machine type executor, so no docker. – Peggi

I don't know why I only started having this problem in 2021. Suddenly a Vagrant script started getting the prompt when it never did before. – Gunsel

Answer 2

This should do the trick

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
sudo -E apt-get -q -y install mysql-server

Of course, it leaves you with a blank root password - so you'll want to run something like

mysqladmin -u root password mysecretpasswordgoeshere

Afterwards to add a password to the account.

Ossieossietzky

Tested and working in new Ubuntu 12.04 instance with MySQL 5.5 – Teliospore

This did not work for me with Azure platform image of Ubunutu 12.04 LTS 64-bit and MySQL 5.5 – Supervene

Worked for me on 12.04 whereas the accepted answer left me unable to log in as root. Couldn't guess the password – Overblouse

This left me unable to log in as root because I couldn't guess the password. I put the code in a bash file and executed. Using Ubuntu 12.04. – Matejka

seems to work in a Dockerfile with ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive but not in a bash (12.04) – Pasteur

If you are installing with sudo, use -E so that the environment variable is passed along. Eg. sudo -E apt-get -q -y install mysql-server. – Mulford

You can also add the env variable directly into the command (without polluting the external environment) by prepending it - DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y install mysql-server – Disconsider

After doing apt-get update it worked for me on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and mysql-server-5.5 – Clemenceau

The mysql password will be stored in a bash log when done this way. – Sextodecimo

@Sextodecimo add a space before the command, and it won't appear in the log. – Ossieossietzky

Worked for me on Debian 8.2--I combined from @PatrickCullen and @Disconsider to get DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive sudo -E apt-get -q -y install mysql-server--worked like a charm! – Sledgehammer

This doesn't work. mysqladmin doesn't return an error, but it doesn't seem to successfully set the password either. – Salcido

I have not been able to get this method to work with Ubuntu 16.04 and mysql-server 5.7. It did, however, work up until I moved to 16.04. – Herrera

You can also do sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get -y install mysql-server, sudo knows how to deal with environment variable assignements that are passed to it. – Schreiber

Can you elaborate on what the different command-line options are and what the purpose is in this context? – Laevorotatory

Working on docker? prefer Dimitre's answer. – Bootery

Answer 3

Another way to make it work:

echo "mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password password root" | debconf-set-selections
echo "mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password_again password root" | debconf-set-selections
apt-get -y install mysql-server-5.5

Note that this simply sets the password to "root". I could not get it to set a blank password using simple quotes '', but this solution was sufficient for me.

Based on a solution here.

Matejka

echo 'mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server/root_password password ' | sudo debconf-set-selections works to specify blank password for me. – Harborage

@TsuneoYoshioka Doesn't work for me. If I put two spaces at the end it sets my password to a single space. With one space it still tries to give the prompt and then screws up the installation. – Kindless

The solution is better because it works in plain UNIX shell or dash – Actinon

Answer 4

Use:

sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt-get install -y mysql-server

sudo mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P3306 -uroot -e"UPDATE mysql.user SET password = PASSWORD('yourpassword') WHERE user = 'root'"

Uncivilized

Thanks! defining variables outside sudo always gets me. – Pellerin