podman

In this blog post, we'll guide you through creating a MariaDB database container using Podman. We'll also show you how to use environment variables to configure the database and connect to it using a MySQL client.

Prerequisites: Podman installed on your system.

Steps:

Create the MariaDB container:

We'll use the podman run command to create a MariaDB container named mdb. The -d flag detaches the container from the current terminal session, allowing it to run in the background. We'll also map the container's port 3306 to the host's port 3306 using the -p flag. Finally, we'll set several environment variables to configure the database:

MYSQL_USER: Username for accessing the database (set to admin here)
MYSQL_PASSWORD: Password for the admin user (set to saysoyeah here)
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: Password for the root user (set to SQLp4ss here)
MYSQL_DATABASE: Name of the database to create (set to testDB here)

Here's the command to run:

podman run -d --name=mdb -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_USER=admin -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=saysoyeah -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=SQLp4ss -e MYSQL_DATABASE=testDB docker.io/mariadb:latest

Once you run this command, verify that the container is running using the podman ps command.

Connect to the MariaDB container:

Before interacting with the database, ensure you have a MySQL client installed on your system. You can typically install it using your system's package manager. For instance, on Debian-based systems, you can use:

apt install mariadb-client-core-10.6

Now, let's connect to the testDB database using the mysql command. We'll provide the following credentials:

Username: admin
Password: saysoyeah
Host: localhost (since the container is running on the same host)
Port: 3306 (mapped from the container)

We'll use the echo command to pipe the show databases; statement to the mysql client to check if the database was created successfully:

echo "show databases;" | mysql -uadmin -h localhost -psaysoyeah -P 3306

Interact with the database:

We've created a sample SQL file named test.sql containing statements to:

Use the testDB database
Create a table named employee with columns for ID, name, and location
Insert some sample employee data into the table
List the contents of the employee table

Here's the content of the test.sql file:

SQL

use testDB;
CREATE TABLE employee (
  empid INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
  name VARCHAR(255),
  location VARCHAR(255)
);
INSERT INTO employee (name, location) VALUES ('John Doe', 'New York');
INSERT INTO employee (name, location) VALUES ('Jane Smith', 'Los Angeles');
INSERT INTO employee (name, location) VALUES ('Alice Johnson', 'Chicago');
INSERT INTO employee (name, location) VALUES ('Bob Williams', 'Houston');
INSERT INTO employee (name, location) VALUES ('Emily Brown', 'San Francisco');

Let's execute the commands in the test.sql file using the mysql client:

Bash

mysql -uadmin -h localhost -P 3306 -psaysoyeah < test.sql 
echo "use testDB;select * from employee;" | mysql -h localhost -P 3306 -uadmin -psaysoyeah

This will create the table, insert data, and then list the contents of the employee table.

Summary

In this blog post, we demonstrated how to create a MariaDB database container using Podman and configure it with environment variables. We also connected to the database container using a MySQL client and performed basic operations using an SQL script.

Feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or would like to see more complex Podman use cases!

Podman series: Deploying a MariaDB Database in a Podman Container

use environment variables