Thank you for your interest in RethinkDB! We hope the installation process goes smoothly for you. Enjoy, and please don't forget to give us your feedback.

System Requirements

RethinkDB currently runs on x86 Linux (both 32-bit and 64-bit variants) and requires MySQL version 5.1.31 (or above). Once RethinkDB is ready for production use, we will port the engine to other architectures.

Building MySQL

These are basic instructions for building MySQL (if you wish to do so yourself). For more details, please visit MySQL documentaiton.

  1. Download the source (unpack to local directory like $HOME/mysql-5.1)

  2. Call ./configure, make, and make install

    • Pass --prefix=$HOME/mysql to ./configure

    • If you want to use InnoDB, also pass --with-innodb

  3. Remove (rename) any old my.cnf that might be in /etc/mysql

  4. (Optional) Install new database, set mysql root password

    • cd $HOME/mysql

    • Create mysql user: sudo adduser ... mysql (if needed)

    • Create basic tables: bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql

    • Start server: bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

    • Change root password: bin/mysqladmin -u root password '<password>'

Installing RethinkDB

  1. Log into MySQL using mysql client and type: 

SHOW VARIABLES;

  1. Look for the variable plugin_dir. It will tell you the MySQL plugin directory.

  2. Place RethinkDB binary into this directory
  3. Change the binary's permissions so MySQL server can access them: 

sudo chown mysql:mysql ha_edb.so

  1. Log into MySQL using mysql client and type: 

INSTALL PLUGIN RethinkDB SONAME 'ha_edb.so';

Creating RethinkDB tables

Simply specify ENGINE = RethinkDB after the CREATE TABLE statement.