Installing SQL Server on Ubuntu 16.04.2

This article is going to show you how it to set up a Linux/SQL Server test environment which will consist of a virtual machine using the Ubuntu Operating System with the latest CTP release of SQL Server 2017 running on it. 

The plan to make SQL Server available on Linux was announced way back in March 2016 and with the recent announcement of the SQL Server 2017 (and subsequent CTP releases) things certainly appear to be right on track for SQL and Linux. 

It's worth adding that in recent weeks I have started to see organisations really take up the idea and have spoken to a few people who are creating their own test boxes and started to think about how to use this combination. Not only that, they've also started to ask for people with the right technical knowledge too so perhaps if you are a DBA who hasn't had a bit of exposure to Linux then now is probably the right time to start! All in all though, it's an encouraging sign for Microsoft.

Anyway, before we get going I'm going to be using VMWare Workstation 12 Player to create the Ubuntu virtual machine, you can download the software from this link and use VM's for non-commercial use.

To start off I need to download the Ubuntu Operating System ISO, which is available from here where you will find the following two download options:

I went for the 16.04.2 LTS version and once downloading and the following message was displayed, which I had great delight sharing with my open-source buddies (this one is for you Adrian).

Once the download has finished I can open up VMWare Player and select the Create a New Virtual Machine option as shown in the image below:

From here I can choose how the Operating System will be installed; from a DVD in my machine, from an ISO (what we will select) or I can install an OS later. Here we can see that I have browsed to the downloaded ISO file and the install process has recognised that it's the Ubuntu 16.04.2 OS.

After clicking next some user details are required:

Which actually tells me off as user names can only be lowercase apparently so I fixed that and carried on to the next part where I need to specify a name for my new Virtual Machine:

Clicking next takes me to the disk capacity screen, I left the options as default so used a 20Gb max disk size and left the split virtual disk into multiple files option selected:

After clicking next we move on to create the virtual machine however before we click Finish and proceed with the create/install process I need to make a slight modification to the configuration of my VM.

The system requirements for running SQL Server on Ubuntu 16.04.2 contains the following 

Note

You need at least 3.25GB of memory to run SQL Server on Linux. For other system requirements, see System requirements for SQL Server on Linux.

On the create VM window the Memory is currently set to 1024 MB so by clicking the Customize Hardware button I can change the allocated memory to 4GB (4096 MB) as in the screenshot below:

I can then click Close as there are no more hardware configurations that I need to make and now I can click Finish and the install process will start; if prompted to install VMware Tools for Linux then go ahead and Download and Install.

Pretty neat install screen, you just don't see enough purple these days!

Once installed the virtual machine will reboot and Ubuntu will start. I get presented with a login screen where I need to enter the username and password that I specified during the install process and now I am ready to go!

Ubuntu!

Now I was following the initial guide that is available here but ran into an error at the very beginning when trying to import the CPG keys, wasn't a biggie as it meant I just didnt have the curl tool so I just had to run the following command first:

sudo apt install curl

Before I could successfully run the curl command:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -

This brought up a install progress type screen and because the Time Spent value was increasing I figured things were progressing...however after a few minutes I was given a connection refused error!!

A little bit of digging around soon led me to a solution, superuser mode which kind of reminded me of the run as administrator option in Windows a little bit.

To start superuser mode type the following:

sudo su

Then I was able to run the curl command once more for info here's a screenshot containing the connection error and the subsequent sudo su and completed curl command:

Now for the next step I need to register the mssql-server repository:

curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-server.list |

sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-server.list

No errors, this is good and now I can also quit using superuser mode at this point:

exit

Now for the actual installation and to do this I need to run the following commands which will go ahead and install SQL Server:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y mssql-server

Next step is to run the conf-setup to specify and confirm the administrator password for SQL Server:

sudo /opt/mssql/bin/mssql-conf setup

Success!

SQL Server is now installed but I can run a quick test to see if the service is running correctly by using the following command:

systemctl status mssql-server

Which brings up the following screen (with a reassuring green selection of text):

That's it, I now have a brand new test instance of Ubuntu with SQL Server running quite happily, for now at least!