How to Enable Remote Access to MySQL

MySQL remote access is disabled by default, but with a few simple steps, you should be up and running with remote MySQL in just a few minutes. This is especially useful when working with multiple developers in an Agile project environment, so that you all use the same data set, and can focus on just writing the application.

Login to SSH to edit remote MySQL config

First, we need to edit the mysql config file to accept and bind remote connections to your server. We do this by editing your my.conf file located on most unix systems at /etc/my.conf or /etc/mysql/my.conf. I’m going to hope and assume you know the basics to ssh into your remote server and vi or nano the conf file.

ssh root@yourserver.com
vi /etc/my.conf

Replace mysqld Defaults

You can either set this up as a new connection or override the default, in this case, I replaced the default connection with my own remote connection settings:

[mysqld]
bind-address    = 255.112.324.12
port            = 3306
user   = mysql
pid-file        = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket          = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
basedir         = /usr
datadir         = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir          = /tmp
language        = /usr/share/mysql/English
# skip-networking
# skip-external-locking

After your done editing, just save and close the file and restart mysql services:

# Ubuntu
service mysql restart
# Other Unix
/sbin/init.d/mysql restart
# Test that your connection is allowed with telnet on your local machine:
telnet 255.112.324.12 3306

Granting Remote Access to MySQL Users

Now we’ve created our remote config for MySQL, we have to grant access to this server to other machines.

mysql -uroot -pMyPass
CREATE DATABASE mydb;
# Grant permission to root from any host:
GRANT ALL ON mydb.* TO root@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyPASSWORD';

Open Up MySQL Remote Ports

Now that our user has been granted access from any host, all thats left is to make sure our OS will allow connections to the default MySQL port

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp --destination-port 3306 -j ACCEPT

And now we should be able to login to our server from our local machine:

mysql -h255.112.324.12 -uroot -pMyPASSWORD