Monthly archives: February, 2011

Configuring MySQL for UTF-8

If you want to run MySQL primarily using UTF-8 then the configuration file my.cnf should contain the following directives: Check that things look right by running this command or by using phpMyAdmin to look at the “Variables” for the server, or some similar technique. which should give a result something like: Then try: which should …

Checking for problems in my.cnf

If you want to check for errors in the MySQL configuration file my.conf you can start the MySQL daemon from a command line with helpful parameters: will provide a lot of information about the available parameters. More useful for diagnosing problems is: which starts up MySQL with a lot of messages – including diagnostics for …

How to change collation for all columns in a MySQL table

In principle, it is possible to change the character set for all the fields in a table. But this can give problems and needs to be tackled with care. The table should certainly be backed up before attempting the change. But it is straightforward to change the collation when the character set is staying the …