There are a lot of tutorials out there describing how to get ODBC work with MySQL under Linux. Unfortunately, most of them were not mentioned to be tutorials and their solutions often do not work reliably and stable.

The following has been tested on a Ubuntu 14.04 machine (MySQL 5.5.37, Apache 2.4.7, PHP 5.5.9, unixODBC 2.2.14) and works stable until now.

Make sure you have root access to your system, either by switching to root user:

su root

or by adding the „sudo“ prefix to each command:

sudo ls
sudo vi
...

Install and configure MySQL:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Install ODBC drivers:

apt-get install libmyodbc unixodbc-bin

Lookup the ODBC driver’s location:

find / -name 'lib*odbc*.so'

OUTPUT (BEISPIEL):
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcnnS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbctxtS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcdrvcfg1S.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcmyS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/liboraodbcS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcpsqlS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/liboplodbcS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcminiS.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc.so
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcdrvcfg2S.so

Create your custom ODBC installation file:

vi /etc/odbcinst.ini

Put this in your odbcinst.ini:

[myodbc_mysql]
Description = ODBC for MySQL
Driver      = /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libmyodbc.so
Setup       = /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/odbc/libodbcmyS.so
UsageCount  = 1

Lookup the MySQL socket path:

mysqladmin -u root -p version

OUTPUT (EXAMPLE):
Server version 5.5.37-0ubuntu0.14.04.1
Protocol version 10
Connection Localhost via UNIX socket
UNIX socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
Uptime: 7 hours 14 min 15 sec

Create your ODBC configuration file:

vi /etc/odbc.ini

Put this in your odbc.ini:

[myodbc_mysql_dsn]                        # this is your system DSN
Description = description of your DSN
Driver      = myodbc_mysql                # custom driver name
Server      = localhost                   # or external IP if needed
Port        = 3306                        # or custom port if needed
Socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock # socket, see above
Database    = mysqldb1                    # MySQL DB name or empty
Option      = 3
ReadOnly    = No

Install the ODBC driver:

odbcinst -i -d -f /etc/odbcinst.ini

Install your system DSN:

odbcinst -i -s -l -f /etc/odbc.ini

Test if your system DSN was installed successfully:

odbcinst -s -q

OUTPUT (EXAMPLE):
[myodbc_mysql_dsn]

Test if you can connect to your MySQL database via ODBC:

isql -v myodbc_mysql_dsn MYSQLUSER MYSQLUSERPASSWORD

OUTPUT (EXAMPLE):
+---------------------------------------+
| Connected!                            |
|                                       |
| sql-statement                         |
| help [tablename]                      |
| quit                                  |
|                                       |
+---------------------------------------+