Last updated on August 28, 2020 by Dan Nanni
In order to log in to a MySQL server, you can run mysql
command along with your login credentials and server's IP address as arguments. For example:
$ mysql -u $MYSQL_ROOT -p $MYSQL_PASS -h 192.168.10.1
However, besides the inconvenience of typing extra arguments, using plain-text login credentials in a command line like above is really not a secure way to access a MySQL server. In a multi-user Linux environment, what you type in command line can easily be revealed to others who happen to run ps
on the same host at the same time.
MySQL offers a way for you to log in to MySQL server without password, by using an external MySQL configuration file. In Linux, there are two different kinds of MySQL configuration files: (1) /etc/my.cnf
and (2) ~/.my.conf
. While any system-wide MySQL configuration is defined in /etc/my.cnf
, any user-specific MySQL configuration is stored in ~/.my.cnf
. You can leverage ~/.my.cnf
to define your MySQL login credential in the file.
$ vi ~/.my.cnf
[client] user=alice password=alice_passwd host=192.168.10.1
Make sure to have the configuration file readable to you only.
$ chmod 0600 ~/.my.cnf
Once ~/.my.cnf
is created, simply typing mysql
command will let you log in to 192.168.10.1
as alice
, and you no longer need to provide login password separately.
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