setting up mysql to accept external connections

stevesweetland

i have a raq4 running mysql 4.0.13 on my lan. i want to be able to query it from any one of the windows-based database connectors there are....

so i need to make the mysql port open to my lan... but i havent a scooby how...

anyone got any helpful help for me?

bradgrafelman

Look in your my.ini file.. do you see a "port=3306" line? Is it commented out?

If not, you should be able to receive connections from outside the server itself. If you're not, here's a couple of things to check:

Are you actually connecting, but unable to authenticate? Make sure the user account you're trying to login has a host value that includes the remote computer you're connecting from. 'root@localhost', for example, does NOT allow connections from other machines. If you want to allow a certain username to connect from ANY host, you'd use the '%' wildcard: 'username@%'.
Are there any kinds of firewalls between the remote computer and the server? Don't forget about the firewall built-in to Windows XP and higher! TCP port 3306 (or the port you've manually configured MySQL to listen on, if applicable) must be open.

stevesweetland

well... heres the funny thing... theres no my.ini file ON my server at present.

how do i find out where it should be, so i can make one, and put it in its place?

bradgrafelman

Depends where you've installed MySQL... if this is a Windows installation, it's probably in c:\Program Files\MySQL\ somewhere. In the base directory (e.g. where 'bin', 'data', etc. are) there should be a my.ini file. If not... I would suggest reinstalling MySQL -the 4.0 series itself is pretty old anyway.

MarkR

The my.cnf file is in /etc/mysql on most Linux / Unix distributions. It may also be somewhere else if a non-packaged MySQL was installed.

It is not normally called my.ini on Unix.

You should check:

The --skip-networking option was not supplied to the server somehow
The "bind-address" parameter is not set to 127.0.0.1 (i.e. localhost)
Any IP level filtering (firewalls etc) allows incoming connections.

Mark