Connecting to the MySQL Server

MySQL client programs generally require that you specify connection parameters when you want to access a MySQL server: the host you want to connect to, your username, and your password. For example, the mysql client can be started like this (optional arguments are enclosed between [ and ]):

shell> mysql [-h host_name] [-u user_name] [-pyour_pass]

Alternate forms of the -h, -u, and -p options are --host=host_name, --user=user_name, and --password=your_pass. Note that there is no space between -p or --password= and the password following it.

Note: Specifying a password on the command-line is not secure! Any user on your system may then find out your password by typing a command like: ps auxww. See Option files.

mysql uses default values for connection parameters that are missing from the command-line:

Thus, for a Unix user joe, the following commands are equivalent:

shell> mysql -h localhost -u joe
shell> mysql -h localhost
shell> mysql -u joe
shell> mysql

Other MySQL clients behave similarly.

On Unix systems, you can specify different default values to be used when you make a connection, so that you need not enter them on the command-line each time you invoke a client program. This can be done in a couple of ways: