Ubuntu: How to Delete a MySQL Database via the Terminal

To delete a database from a MySQL server instance, we need to make a DROP DATABASE call against the server.

First, fire up MySQL in your terminal and login as an administrator account with:

mysql -u root -p

You will be prompted for your root password before being granted access to the MySQL monitor.

Now to grab a list of available databases on the system. Running:

show databases;

Will result in quite a list of available databases being drawn on the screen (note, it only lists the databases your user account has privileges to see). Once you have located the database you wish to delete in this list we can proceed:

drop database if exists mydatabase;

This will now delete the mydatabase database from the MySQL server if it exists. If not, the drop database statement is simply ignored.

Nifty.