Learning MySQL

Structure of the Options File

We saw in the last section how you can specify options for the MySQL monitor. An options file can have a section for each program that uses it. For example, you can have a [mysql] section for the mysql program and a [mysqldump] section for the mysqldump program. Similarly, you can have a [mysqld] section for the MySQL server daemons mysqld, mysqld_safe, and mysqld-nt.

Where options are common to all client programs, they can be consolidated under a [client] section. Similarly, options common to all server programs can be listed under a [server] section.

Be careful not to make program options too generic. For example, the mysql program is a client and takes a database option. However, mysqladmin and mysqlshow are examples of client programs that don’t understand this option. If you include the database option in the [client] section, like this:

[client]
database=music

these programs will just complain and quit, as below:

$ mysqladmin status
mysqladmin: unknown variable 'database=music'

You should include the database option in a separate group for the [mysql] program, rather than including it in the [client] group.

Let’s look at a more interesting options file:

[server] user=mysql port=57777 basedir=/usr/local/mysql-standard-5.0.22-linux-i686 socket=/home/mysql/server1.sock datadir=/home/mysql/data tmpdir=/home/mysql/tmp pid_file=/home/mysql/logs/server1.pid # log server messages to: log=/home/mysql/logs/server1.main.log # log errors to this log_error=/home/mysql/logs/server1.error.log ...