How to remove MySQL from your CentOS system

When doing an installation of a specific version of MySQL on your CentOS machine, you may get errors caused by the previous MySQL that had been installed earlier; probably a different version.

When that happens, it is recommended that you remove MySQL completely from your system and then do a fresh installation with the specific version of your choice.

Below is the procedure to remove MySQL from your CentOS system..

NB: Ensure that you do not have any databases that are running.

  • Uninstalling MySQL

Log in as root and uninstall all the MySQL packages

# yum remove mysql mysql-server
  • Remove MySQL Directory

By default, the MySQL data directory is /var/lib/mysql

This directory needs to be removed as well. We recommend you do a backup of the current directory and remove it.

 # mv /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql_old
  • Remove other mysql packages

Run the following command to ensure that all MySQL packages are removed.

# rpm -qa | grep mysql

Then remove the specific MySQL package should you find it.

Once this is done, you can now go ahead and do a clean install of MySQL.

1 Comment

  1. Very important. Was trying t reinstall without removing old mysql directory. mysql couldn’t even start with traces of old files.

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