MySQL and Zone Alarm

Norman_Graham

Hi all

As I just spent several frustrating hours wondering why I couldn't start the MySQL client, I wanted to tell everybody the reason: I had Zone Alarm switched on. The client call didn't produce a Zone Alarm query - it was simply rebuffed. Stopping and starting the server produces a Zone Alarm query, but not the client.

If you are using MySQL and have Zone Alarm installed as a service (NT/2K/XP), shutdown zone alarm before trying to use the client. As I say, the server will work with Zone Alarm, but not the client. Maybe there's some setting you can change in Zone Alarm, but I don't know what it is.

Hope that helps somebody

Norm

piersk

[aside]I havent used ZA for a while, but isn't there a feature where you can set it to allow certain applications access to the internet?[/aside]

My actual point is this: I know the server runs on port 3306, so couldn't you allow access to this?

Norman_Graham

Hi Piersk

Well, what happens is that, if you start the server (NET START mysql), you get the ZA query and just say yes (you can also say yes and don't ask again). So the server is up and running no problem. However ... when you fire up the client (C:\mysql\bin\mysql mysql -uroot -ppassword), ZA doesn't produce a query for the call to port 3306, it just silently repels it and you get an error on the console. I think the problem is the fact that it's an internal call and has nothing to do with your browser, so ZA doesn't really know what to do with it and kills it.

I'm sure it can be altered somehow, although possibly only with the pro version of ZA (I've got the freeware version). However, it's no big deal. I just shut down ZA temporarily while using the MySQL client. If I need to go online while using the client, I can just exit briefly and start ZA again.

Having said that, if you do know how to set up ZA to deal with this, I'd certainly be interested in the details.

Cheers

Norm