ODBC driver (MySQL) Install and Setup on Ubuntu 16.04

I am writing this documentation after having spent a couple days trying to figure this out.

• Install some Ubuntu packages

apt install unixodbc odbcinst

Why? If you don’t have unixodbc you will not be able to use the isql command, and without odbcinst you will get this lovely output when trying to install the driver:

error while loading shared libraries: libodbcinst.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

So be a lamb and install those packages. 😉

• Download the MySQL ODBC Connector archive

wget https://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/Connector-ODBC/5.3/mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.10-linux-ubuntu16.04-x86-64bit.tar.gz

(If you want to get a different version get the link from here: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/)

• Extract the archive

tar -xvf mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.10-linux-ubuntu16.04-x86-64bit.tar.gz

• Copy the driver files

cp mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.10-linux-ubuntu16.04-x86-64bit/lib/libmyodbc5* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/

• Install the driver

mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.10-linux-ubuntu16.04-x86-64bit/bin/myodbc-installer -d -a -n “mysql” -t “DRIVER=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc5w.so;”

• Check some configs

There are two files that we care about:

/etc/odbcinst.ini –> Where the ODBC driver is defined (This file should already be created at this point)

[mysql]
Driver=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc5w.so
UsageCount=1

/etc/odbc.ini –> Where the Database connection is defined (This one can be created manually with your favorite text editor)

[DSN]
Description=MySQL cool database
Driver=mysql
SERVER=host.domain.local
UID=database_username
PWD=database_username_password
DATABASE=database_name
PORT=3306

Make sure that the driver handle in the obcdinst.ini file ([mysql]) matches the name of the driver in the odbc.ini file (Driver=mysql).

The ‘DSN’ in the obdc.ini file is merely the handle of the connection, which you can use like this:

isql -v DSN

So if your DSN is ‘cool_database’ you would do:

isql -v cool_database

… and if it works you should end up at something like this:

+—————————————+
| Connected!                             |
|                                                |
| sql-statement                          |
| help [tablename]                     |
| quit                                          |
|                                                 |
+—————————————+
SQL>

Sidenote

Why was I bothering with this? To get the Zabbix ODBC Item working! 😉