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My mysql server's current server character set is latin1. My server is started on startup via rc.conf setting mysql_enable="YES". How to set my server to use utf8 as the server character set?

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2 Answers

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From the manual,

Specify character settings at server startup. To select a character set and collation at server startup, use the --character-set-server and --collation-server options.

You include the following in /usr/local/etc/my.cnf

[mysqld]
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci

(You could find samples of my.cnf in /usr/local/share/mysql)

More information on mysql

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/etc/mysql doesn't exist on FreeBSD – User Sep 8 '12 at 2:43
@User that's a mistake, sorry. answer updated – warl0ck Sep 8 '12 at 2:55
I'm trying this but for some reason mysql doesn't want to start when the file is there. If I rename the file then mysql starts fine. – User Sep 8 '12 at 3:02
up vote 3 down vote

I edited /etc/rc.conf and added the mysql_args line below:

mysql_enable="YES"
mysql_args="--character-set-server=utf8"

This works and I can see the server character set is updated.

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I'd prefer a config file based solution but this is working for now – User Sep 8 '12 at 3:02

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