Running both MySQL 4 and 5 on a same box

I had to make a clone of a website on a development server. The site was running on MySQL 4 and dev server on version 5. Ideally, all queries would run fine, but a huge query with lots of joins was failing for some reason.

In order to keep a clone as is, I decided to try and install MySQL 4 along with version 5 on the same server.

On dev server MySQL 5 was installed using apt-get, and I installed MySQL 4 like this:

Download MySQL 4 source from a local mirror

$wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-4.1/mysql-4.1.22.tar.gz/from/http://mysql.blic.net/

Unpack and install

$tar zxvf mysql-4.1.22.tar.gz
$sudo groupadd mysql
$sudo useradd -g mysql mysql
$cd mysql-4.1.22
$./configure --prefix=/usr/local/mysql
$make
$sudo make install
$sudo cp ./support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
$cd /usr/local/mysql
$sudo ./bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
$sudo chown -R root .
$sudo chown -R mysql var
$sudo chgrp -R mysql .

Start the daemon

$sudo /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql --port=3308 --sock=/tmp/mysql4.sock &

Connect to installed MySQL 4 using shell

$/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql --socket=/tmp/mysql4.sock

Display database version

mysql> select version();
+------------+
| version() |
+------------+
| 4.1.22-log |
+------------+

To connect phpMyAdmin to MySQL 4 edit the phpMyAdmin config file and change server value ‘localhost’ to ‘:/tmp/mysql4.sock‘

From web interface just type ‘mysql’ for username, and leave password empty. (Do set a password for MySQL user later, this was just an example)