Docker and MySQL

In my pursuit of an easier, personal "intranet", my next task was to get MySQL running.  It's critical for the Grafana and Nagios instances that run my environmental monitoring.  There is a lot of historical (hysterical?) data involved, so we'll make it easier and just migrate it over, right?

First, create your docker directory for MySQL :

mkdir -p /opt/docker/mysql

Then, create only one file in there, the infamous docker-compose.yml :

services:
  mysql:
    image: mysql:latest
    container_name: mysql-container
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: super-secret-pwd
      # uncomment below if you want to automatically create and select a database
      # MYSQL_DATABASE: database_name
    ports:
      - "3306:3306"
    volumes:
      - /opt/docker/storage/mysql:/var/lib/mysql

Change the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD row in the docker-compose.yml, and you're done.

Now, we are ready to spin that sucker up already - it really is that simple.

docker compose up -d

Give it a minute to spin it up.  Then, test the connection (no MySQL Unix-socket will be available, so your MySQL command has to use the "--protocol TCP" option :

[jlewis@docker mysql]$ mysql -u root -p -h localhost --protocol TCP
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 9
Server version: 9.7.1 MySQL Community Server - GPL

Copyright (c) 2000, 2026, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql              |
| performance_schema |
| sys                |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> exit 

Create whatever you need in your database, and you have a modular database that can be quickly moved over to another instance of docker if CPU gets too high.  In my case, I'm migrating an existing MySQL database, so I'll run : 

mysqldump -u root -p databasename > mysqldump-databasename.sql

Copy that to the location that can write this into the database, create the database ("CREATE DATABASE databasename" in the new MySQL server first) and import it :

mysql -u root -p --protocol TCP databasename > mysqldump-databasename.sql

Doing pretty good so far.