Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Following the Instructions in This Topic
Starting in the next section, we'll explain how to configure a MySQL server on the same
system that you're logged in to (that is,
localhost
). We won't describe how to set up
the MySQL server on one computer and the web server on a different computer; it
shouldn't be too hard to modify our instructions to do this. If you modify any of the
default settings, you'll need to remember to specify them where necessary.
We also assume that if you're using Windows, you use only the
C:
disk; we'll explain
how and when to change your working directory. When we show only the Linux or
Mac OS X prompt as below:
$
or the Windows Command Prompt as:
C:\>
the working disk and directory are unimportant, or you will be in the appropriate lo-
cation after following the steps we describe.
When we use the hash or pound symbol (
#
) as the prompt:
#
you will need to type in the commands as the superuser. For a Linux or Mac OS X
system, this means you should log in as the system superuser by typing
su -
, or use the
sudo
keyword before the command. For a Windows system, you must be logged in with
a system account that has administrator privileges.
Most of our command-line examples outside this chapter are written in a form suitable
for Linux and Mac OS X; to run these instructions under Windows, simply replace the
forward slash character (
/
) with the backslash character (
\
). For example, you may see
an example starting the MySQL monitor program (
mysql
) from the
bin
subdirectory as
follows:
$
bin/mysql
On Windows, you'd type
bin\mysql
at the Windows Command Prompt. After this
chapter, we'll mostly omit the path to programs and assume that you'll call them using
the appropriate path described for your installation in this chapter.
The behavior of many of the programs that we describe in this topic can be modified
through options. For example, you can use the
user
and
password
options to specify
the username and password you want to use. Options can be specified on the command
line after the program name. Some programs can also read options from a file. We
explain options files in Chapter 11.
When you list options on the command line, you identify them by two adjacent
hyphens:
$
mysql --user=saleh --password=tomcat
