How to Install the MySQL ODBC Driver on Ubuntu 16.04?

The seemingly easy task to install the MySQL ODBC driver on Ubuntu 16.04 has turned out to be a challenge. It has resulted from the driver upgrade problem that Ubuntu developers couldn’t have handled.

If you have the latest version of Ubuntu 16.04 installed on your system, you may have already hit a snag while attempting to locate the ODBC driver.

Prior to that MySQL could be accessed via ODBC-based applications, after having the ODBC driver installed using a simple Terminal command:

As for the latest version, all efforts to search the Ubuntu repository for the ODBC driver are in vain: of all the repositories listed in the software sources, none of them include the libmyodbc package. According to the Ubuntu version history, the package used to exist but has been deleted due to a certain bug.

MySQL 5.7, as opposed to other versions, restricts symbols available in libmysqlclient20. It looks like MyODBC uses some of these symbols, so it cannot be installed from libmysqlclient-dev.

In fact, maintaining MyODBC in Ubuntu is a disputable question, since there are no hard dependencies on it, and it is a default alternative for libreoffice-canzeley-client.

Thus, MyODBC that uses libmysqlclient functions incompatible with MySQL 5.7 is not supported by Ubuntu 16.04 at the moment. Once the work on MySQL 5.7 is finished, Ubuntu developers may get it back into the release. However, there is a chance it is never going to happen.

If you have software that absolutely requires the MySQL ODBC driver, it is possible to set one up and get it working on Ubuntu 16.04. To do it, take the following steps:

1. Download the ODBC driver for Ubuntu 15.10 (mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.6-linux-ubuntu15.10-x86-64bit.tar.gz) from this page.
2. Extract the files: tar -xvf mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.6-linux-ubuntu15.10-x86-64bit.tar.gz
3. Copy the driver to the ODBC folder: sudo cp mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.6-linux-ubuntu15.10-x86-64bit/lib/libmyodbc5* /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/
4. Install it: sudo mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.6-linux-ubuntu15.10-x86-64bit/bin/myodbc-installer -d -a -n "MySQL" -t "DRIVER=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc5w.so;"

Check its functioning:

1. Create DSN: sudo mysql-connector-odbc-5.3.6-linux-ubuntu15.10-x86-64bit/bin/myodbc-installer -s -a -c2 -n "test" -t "DRIVER=MySQL;SERVER=127.0.0.1;DATABASE=mysql;UID=root;PWD=123456"
2. Сonnect the database and query it:

    

   radik@radik-VirtualBox:~$ isql test
   +—————————————+
   | Connected! |
   | |
   | sql-statement |
   | help [tablename] |
   | quit |
   | |
   +—————————————+
   SQL> show tables
   +——————————————————————+
   | Tables_in_mysql |
   +——————————————————————+
   | columns_priv |
   | db |
   | engine_cost |
   | event |
   | func |
   ……….
   +——————————————————————+
   

3. You’ll finally get the following file configuration:

    

   radik@radik-VirtualBox:~$ cat /etc/odbc.ini
   [test]
   Driver=MySQL
   SERVER=127.0.0.1
   UID=root
   PWD=123456
   DATABASE=mysql
   PORT=3306
   
   radik@radik-VirtualBox:~$ cat /etc/odbcinst.ini
   [MySQL]
   Driver=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc5w.so
   UsageCount=1
   

The ODBC driver for MySQL is installed. Your software now has an opportunity to establish connection with MySQL directly via TCP/IP.

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