Installing MySQL 5.1 on ubuntu 8.X or later using apt

First, you need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add the dotdeb repository. This is the line you need to add for Lenny, but just change it to Etch if you haven’t upgraded yet (see my earlier post if you want to know how to do that)

    deb http://packages.dotdeb.org lenny all

Then, update…

    apt-get update

And then install 5.1

    apt-get install mysql-server-5.1

set password for root

sudo mysqladmin -u root password admin