How to Remove MySQL from server completely centos red hat

There maybe a case when you want to completely remove mysql from your server but before un-installing mysql from server make sure you have the backup of databases of mysql the default location of databases is /var/lib/mysql 

To un-install mysql from server follow the steps below.

Step 1: Uninstall Packages

First we need to uninstall mysql packages using following command.

• yum remove mysql mysql-server

Step 2: Check it there are still packages in the server.
rpm -qa | grep mysql

If you don't get ant thing in the output that means every thing is fine, If you get the output as below proceed with the next step.

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[root@server ~]# rpm -qa | grep mysql

mysql-5.0.95-5.el5_9

mysql-server-5.0.95-5.el5_9 

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mysql-5.0.95-5.el5_9 and mysql-server-5.0.95-5.el5_9 are packages which are still installed in the server they maybe different in your case remove them by using the commands below.

• yum remove mysql-5.0.95-5.el5_9
• yum remove mysql-server-5.0.95-5.el5_9

Step 3: Rename MySQL Directory

Now we need to just rename existing mysql directory with other name. We can also delete that directory but rename is better to keep a copy of existing files.

• mv /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql_backup

Thats All