Using Podman to Run GCD Database Locally
I've had a few users ask me how to run a local copy of the Grand Comics Database, so I figured I'd do a short write-up on how I do it.
I use Podman for containers instead of Docker, but the differences between them is fairly minimal and this should give you a good idea of how to do it. Anyway, let's get started!
First off, you'll want to download the most recent database dump from GCD which can be found here. Once it's finished downloading, unzip the file:
unzip current.zip -d /tmp/
You should see output similar to this:
Archive: current.zip
inflating: /tmp/2022-10-01.sql
Ok, now that we've got the data from gcd, let's create a MySQL container. We need to first pull a MySQL image, which can be done by running:
podman pull docker.io/library/mysql:5.7
After it's done downloading the image, you can confirm:
podman images
which should return output similar to this:
bpepple@frodo ~ $ podman images mysql
REPOSITORY TAG IMAGE ID CREATED SIZE
docker.io/library/mysql 5.7 eb175b0743cc 19 hours ago 448 MB
Now we need to create the container. You'll want to replace user and mysql credentials with your own values. The volume flag is where on your filesystem you want to save the database. The Z suffix is used for systems, primarily Red Hat-based, that use SELinux. If you don't use SELinux that can be dropped:
podman run -d --name mysql -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_USER=bpepple -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=123456 -e MYSQL_DATABASE=gcd -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=567890 --volume /home/bpepple/Storage/pods/mysql/:/var/lib/mysql:Z mysql:5.7
Now let's verify that the container was created and is running by using the following:
podman ps
You should see output similar to this:
bpepple@frodo ~ $ podman ps
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
400c957ae25d docker.io/library/mysql:5.7 mysqld 7 seconds ago Up 7 seconds ago 0.0.0.0:3306->3306/tcp mysql
Now we just need to dump the data from GCD into the database. We can do this by running:
cat /tmp/2022-10-01.sql | podman exec -i mysql /usr/bin/mysql -u root --password=567890 gcd
Depending on the specs of your machine, this might be a good time to grab some coffee, since the SQL dump is very large and will take awhile to finish. Once it's done, we can start using the database by attaching to the container:
podman exec -it mysql mysql -ubpepple -p gcd
This command will prompt you for your password, and then you'll see the MySQL prompt where you can run a simple SQL statement like so:
DESCRIBE gcd_issue;
Which should produce output similar to this:
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| number | varchar(50) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| volume | varchar(50) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_volume | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| display_volume_with_number | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| series_id | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| indicia_publisher_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| indicia_pub_not_printed | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
| brand_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| no_brand | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| publication_date | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| key_date | varchar(10) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| sort_code | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| price | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| page_count | decimal(10,3) | YES | | NULL | |
| page_count_uncertain | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| indicia_frequency | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
| no_indicia_frequency | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| editing | longtext | NO | | NULL | |
| no_editing | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| notes | longtext | NO | | NULL | |
| created | datetime | NO | | 1901-01-01 00:00:00 | |
| modified | datetime | NO | MUL | 1901-01-01 00:00:00 | |
| deleted | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| is_indexed | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| isbn | varchar(32) | NO | MUL | | |
| valid_isbn | varchar(13) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_isbn | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| variant_of_id | int(11) | YES | MUL | NULL | |
| variant_name | varchar(255) | NO | | | |
| barcode | varchar(38) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_barcode | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| title | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | | |
| no_title | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | 0 | |
| on_sale_date | varchar(10) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| on_sale_date_uncertain | tinyint(1) | NO | | 0 | |
| rating | varchar(255) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| no_rating | tinyint(1) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| volume_not_printed | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
| no_indicia_printer | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
+----------------------------+---------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
40 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Great, we've got the database up and running! To logout from the container just type:
\q
To stop the container, you would just use the following:
podman stop mysql
And that's it! Podman has tons of niceties (like auto-updating images, using systemd for container start-ups, etc.) and I'd encourage you to read up on using some its many features. If it get some free time, I'll do a follow-up article about using Python to query the database and using that data for things like writing metadata to comic archives.
