The next step in the list for moving my minor websites to OpenSolaris (see the first post for the motivation) was to set up MySQL. After I downloaded the OpenSolaris Web Stack package, MySQL was installed and running, so it was more a matter of tweaking. Little things like copying the /etc/mysql/5.0/my-huge.cnf to /etc/mysql/my.cnf so that the default configuration takes advantage of the 2 GB of RAM, for example.
I’ve heard conflicting things about whether one needs a root password for MySQL, given that it uses the Unix root identity by default. After my years in security and identity I decided to set one anyway, as recommended by the MySQL post-installation setup documentation, even if it would be hard for anyone to get into the machine to do any damage, since it will be behind a firewall/router.
The next step was to move the WordPress-based sites. I decided to try the export/import facilities in WordPress, since I haven’t tried those out before, and it meant being able to use a new MySQL database with no cruft in it. I set up new users for the specific databases, copied the files across with rsync, imported the XML file, and voila! It all worked out pretty well, although resetting the various configuration options in WordPress took a few minutes.
