How do I uninstall MySQL?

Question

I installed MySQL using sudo apt-get. Now I need to remove it from my system.

How can I do that?

KK Patel · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-25T19:32:27.823

421

I assume that you don't need MySQL anymore and you have already taken backup of your important databases. I suggest you to take backup of your important MySQL databases.

Note: Your all mysql data will be lost.

First make sure that MySQL service is stopped.

sudo systemctl stop mysql

Remove MySQL related all packages completely.

sudo apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server-core-* mysql-client-core-*

Remove MySQL configuration and data. If you have changed database location in your MySQL configuration, you need to replace /var/lib/mysql according to it.

sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql /var/lib/mysql

(Optional) Remove unnecessary packages.

sudo apt autoremove

(Optional) Remove apt cache.

sudo apt autoclean

edited Sep 25 '20 at 19:32

answered Aug 06 '12 at 08:49

KK Patel

19,083

2

I guess this doesn't work. After I do these steps, I tried : sudo apt-get install mysql-client-core-5.5. But it shows : mysql-client-core-5.5 is already the newest version. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 97 not upgraded.. Is that mean still mysql resides in my pc? – batman Aug 06 '12 at 09:35
1

If I try sudo dpkg --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common I get : dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching mysql-server dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching mysql-client dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching mysql-common. I'm bit confused now. Is that mysql have been removed or not? – batman Aug 06 '12 at 11:17
Why does this remove xbmc and xbmc-bin as well? There are no xbmc tables in mysql when browsing with phpmyadmin. – Redsandro Jan 16 '14 at 17:47
5

this wasn't sufficient for me, a few more things had to be done: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16178696/447661 – Mihai Rotaru Jul 26 '14 at 21:07
I tried all the commands listed here and afterwards if I type 'mysql' into the terminal and press tab twice I still see some option come up for mysql, does this mean anything? > mysql mysqld mysql_upgrade mysqlcheck mysql_install_db – GoProCameraByGoPro Mar 26 '15 at 20:43
The config files have remained though, in /etc/mysql. Should those be manually deleted? – s.brody May 18 '15 at 18:25
4

This also wasn't sufficient for me - for me, also, the answer here instead worked: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16178696/368896 – Dan Nissenbaum Oct 09 '15 at 08:35
You might want to add: rm -rf /var/log/mysql – jlh Apr 08 '16 at 07:15
Run this as well to be absolutely sure that you removed everything sudo apt-get purge mysql* mariadb* – Dejv Jun 14 '16 at 13:15
For whoever this does not work - try removing them one after one, in various orders. – phil294 Aug 04 '16 at 10:23
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql will remove your databases in default location. DO a back up first, if you feel you may need your data later on! – Augusto Oct 10 '16 at 09:40
i tried this and boom everything along with mysql gets removed. i will not recommend this solution – Mayur Satav Aug 12 '20 at 11:27
be careful on using sudo apt autoremove. It deleted a lot of important stuff from my server! – Soheil Rahsaz Mar 02 '22 at 14:21

score 120 · Answer 2 · edited May 13 '14 at 14:17

120

all the above solutions are correct but I would try with

sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql*
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean

This will uninstall all mysql related packages.

edited May 13 '14 at 14:17

Avinash Raj

78,556

answered May 13 '14 at 14:08

Naveen

1,201

13

This is the easiest/simplest way to get rid of everything mysql-related. Though the wildcard here will match pretty much any package with 'mysq' in it's name, so you might want to specify sudo apt-get remove --purge -s 'mysql*' to be more specific. – geerlingguy May 23 '14 at 18:52
Seconded on the use of a more specific regex. I ended up using the regex of '^mysql-' Initially, I was going to run mysql, but found out it caught a ton of stuff unrelated...like:Note, selecting 'mysql-testsuite' for regex '^mysql' Note, selecting 'mysql-server' for regex '^mysql' Note, selecting 'mysql-server-core' for regex '^mysql' Note, selecting 'mysqmail' for regex '^mysql' Note, selecting 'mysqmail-pure-ftpd-logger' for regex '^mysql*' – MaasSql Mar 11 '15 at 16:18
I tried all the commands listed here and afterwards if I type 'mysql' into the terminal and press tab twice I still see some option come up for mysql, does this mean anything? > mysql mysqld mysql_upgrade mysqlcheck mysql_install_db – GoProCameraByGoPro Mar 26 '15 at 20:45
This only worked for me when I used sudo apt-get -f autoremove – Simon D Oct 21 '15 at 05:33
this gives me a couple of errors like E: Unable to locate package mysql. my installation seems to be a bit messed up. and it kind of frightening that i cant even re-install it. – phil294 Aug 03 '16 at 20:17
this is dangerous. use the * at your own peril. bash will expand all matching cases and remove them, even if they might be unrelated to mysql. – Apr 29 '17 at 00:23
it did not remove the files in /etc/mysql for my Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS – simpleuser Jul 06 '17 at 20:17
PLEASE DONT USE THIS!!! This removed atom, git, perl and lots of other important packages from my system. Dont know why – Vignesh T.V. Sep 05 '17 at 14:32
sudo apt-get autoremove very misleading... it also uninstall some of installed applications – Shift 'n Tab Mar 06 '18 at 07:16
@Roel that would only happened if your application is depended on any of mentioned packages you remove. – KK Patel Aug 12 '20 at 16:04

score 34 · Answer 3 · answered May 03 '15 at 18:34

34

This will remove mysql 5.6 from ubuntu 15.04

sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql
sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql

answered May 03 '15 at 18:34

Vasko

451
4
4

1

Manually removing the directories seemed necessary for me (so +1), perhaps because my directories were symbolic links? – Jonathan Dec 13 '15 at 09:20
1

I felt like your anwser was the most concise, so I wantedo comment here. I did something similar for mariadb, however i noticed I had a dangling system service. I had to remove it using: http://superuser.com/a/936976/260852 – Mario Olivio Flores Sep 28 '16 at 14:28
1

Thanks, this also works for mysql 5.7 on ubuntu 16.04. – tated Jan 22 '18 at 22:52

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 25 '16 at 06:47

10

First you need to stop your mysql server from service.

sudo service mysql stop

Then You can use purge command to uninstall

sudo apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-client

Note: the above based on your package list. I have installed both server and client. This will for your convineient

answered Feb 25 '16 at 06:47

Vijayaprakash P

107

Stopping the MySQL service was key for me. I had it running and kept getting an error: dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
Stopping MySQL, then running
sudo dpkg --configure -a
followed by
sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql*
worked for me.
– tww0003 Aug 14 '18 at 14:44

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Completly uninstall mysql:

sudo -i
service mysql stop
killall -KILL mysql mysqld_safe mysqld
apt-get --yes purge mysql*
apt-get --yes autoremove --purge
apt-get autoclean
deluser --remove-home mysql
delgroup mysql
rm -rf /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/mysql /etc/apparmor.d/cache/usr.sbin.mysqld /etc/mysql /var/lib/mysql /var/log/mysql* /var/log/upstart/mysql.log* /var/run/mysqld ~/.mysql_history
updatedb

Based on this answer and many others...

score 5 · Answer 6 · edited Dec 04 '12 at 15:57

5

I don't use Ubuntu much but what I think you should try is what I did.

I first typed this in command line : sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common,

then followed with this below : sudo apt-get autoremove

and finally typed this : sudo apt-get autoclean.

I found that it was removed.

edited Dec 04 '12 at 15:57

VedVals

3,471

answered Dec 04 '12 at 14:54

Tareto

51

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Oct 09 '19 at 10:51

I forgot the MySQL root password and needed to reset. I tried this, but it didn't work, because it kept saying "can't write logs" or something similar.

My solution was to completely remove MySQL from Ubuntu 13.10 and fresh installation.

sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql

I had to run the last command because Ubuntu sometimes keeps some libs even you try to purge them all.

Now, I use this command to install MySQL server and client:

sudo apt-get install mysql-client mysql-server

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 27 '19 at 06:31

Try this, It will fully wipeout out every single file of MySQL from your system:

sudo service mysql stop  #or mysqld
sudo killall -9 mysql
sudo killall -9 mysqld
sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo deluser -f mysql
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql
sudo apt-get purge mysql-server-core-5.7
sudo apt-get purge mysql-client-core-5.7
sudo rm -rf /var/log/mysql
sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql

score 2 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 25 '17 at 10:06

2

When I tried sudo apt-get purge mysql* it didn't work.

Purged mysql5 with:

sudo apt-get purge mysql-*

Then for cleaning up:

sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean

edited Jul 25 '17 at 10:06

simhumileco

671

answered Aug 08 '16 at 17:37

The Wise

81

How do I uninstall MySQL?

9 Answers9

Completly uninstall mysql:

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