Question

We are currently using SQLite3 as our database and want to switch it to MySQL before we send our Rails app live via Passenger and Nginx to our Linode Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid box.

we set up the msql server on our linode ubuntu 10.04 box
and set a password for the root user. how do we configure database.yml ? what are the steps to set up this MySQL database? We have the mysql2 gem installed and in our Gemfile.

What does database.yml need to look like in order to deploy with MySQL ?

Does the database need any specific name as in database name?

Do we go about running rake db:create on our machine or run it on our Ubuntu box?

current database.yml

# SQLite version 3.x
# gem install sqlite3
# 
# Ensure the SQLite 3 gem is defined in your Gemfile
# gem 'sqlite3'
development:
adapter: sqlite3
database: db/development.sqlite3
pool: 5
timeout: 2000

# Warning: The database defined as "test" will be erased and
# re-generated from your development database when you run "rake".
# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.
test:
adapter: sqlite3
database: db/test.sqlite3
pool: 5
timeout: 2000

production:
adapter: mysql2
encoding: utf8
database: production
pool: 5
username: root
password: "mysql password"

Answer 1

Did you try a simple connection test? If not, here is a script to test the connection to your db.

#! /usr/bin/ruby

# getting required gems  
require 'rubygems'  
require 'mysql'  

## ----- test the connection -----  
# http://rubydoc.info/gems/mysql/2.8.1/frames  
# real_connect(host=nil, user=nil, passwd=nil, db=nil, port=nil, sock=nil, flag=nil)
mysql = Mysql.connect('localhost', 'root', 'password', 'db_name', 3006, '', '')  

## ----- if connected, will list databases -----  
puts mysql.list_dbs().to_s  

In case the ‘mysql’ did not install properly, you will have to custom configure the install properties. On my Mac (different that you linux machine), I referenced this blog post to get something like this,

sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64" gem install --no-rdoc --no-ri mysql -- --with mysqlconfig=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

UPDATE – Had to reinstall mysql gem for a different ruby version, and removing the architecture notation allowed me to install the gem.

sudo gem install --no-rdoc --no-ri mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config