Chapter 177. How to Protect or Change the MySQL Socket File /tmp/mysql.sock

If you have problems with the fact that anyone can delete the MySQL communication socket /tmp/mysql.sock, you can, on most versions of Unix, protect your /tmp filesystem by setting the sticky bit on it. Log in as root and do the following:

shell> chmod +t /tmp

This will protect your /tmp filesystem so that files can be deleted only by their owners or the superuser (root).

You can check if the sticky bit is set by executing ls -ld /tmp. If the last permission bit is t, the bit is set.

You can change the place where MySQL uses / puts the socket file the following ways:

You can test that the socket works with this command:

shell> mysqladmin --socket=/path/to/socket version