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Symptom

Normally only your website accesses the MySQL database of your Bitpalace Small Enterprise Server. However, now you want to access the database from an external system, too. Maybe you run an inventory system that stores its data to your MySQL database. Or maybe you own an online shop software that features a backend for your computer where you manage your products. That software ought to be able to communicate with the MySQL database on your Bitpalace Small Enterprise Server.

Solution

1. Log-in to your Linux console by SSH.

2. By default MySQL only listens to database port messages on the local host. If you want to access MySQL from external systems, you must remove this binding. Edit the /etc/my.cnf file

vi /etc/my.cnf

Change the line
bind-address=127.0.0.1

to
# bind-address=127.0.0.1

Save the changes:
[ESC] + :wq! + [ENTER]

3. Stop and start the MySQL service, so that the changes will be read:

FreeBSD:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server start

Linux:
service mysqld restart

4. Log-in to the MySQL console:

mysql -u root -p

5. Grant a new or existing user privileges to access the database from any external servers:

grant all privileges on [databasename].* to [loginname]@"%" identified by [password]

Instead of [databasename], [loginname] and [password] enter values of your choice. The placeholder "%" means "from any IP address ". If you want to limit access to a specific subnet, you can also enter the subnet address. For instance, if you want to limit access to the subnet "213.198.*.*", use this command:

grant all privileges on [databasename].* to [loginname]@"213.198.%" identified by [password]

6. Activate the new login credentials:

flush privileges;

7. Exit the MySQL console:

exit;

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