MySQL: How to allow remote connection to mysql

Question

I have installed MySQL Community Edition 5.5 on my local machine and I want to allow remote connections so that I can connect from external source.

How can I do that

Answer 1

I had to this challenge when working on a Java Project with MySQL server as the database.

Here's how I did it:

First, modify your confirm that your MySQL server configuration to allow for remote connections. Use your preferred text editor to open the MySQL server configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/mysqld.cnf

Scroll down to the bind-address line and ensure that is either commented out or replaced with 0.0.0.0 (to allow all remote connections) or replaced with Ip-Addresses that you want remote connections from.

Once you make the necessary changes, save and exit the configuration file. Apply the changes made to the MySQL config file by restarting the MySQL service:

sudo systemctl restart mysql

Next, log into the MySQL server console on the server it was installed:

mysql -u root -p

Enter your mysql user password

Check the hosts that the user you want has access to already. In my case the user is root:

SELECT host FROM mysql.user WHERE user = "root";

This gave me this output:

+-----------+
| host      |
+-----------+
| localhost |
+-----------+

Next, I ran the command below to grant the root user remote access to the database named my_database:

USE my_database;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'my-password';

Note: % grants a user remote access from all hosts on a network. You can specify the Ip-Address of the individual hosts that you want to grant the user access from using the command - GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'Ip-Address' IDENTIFIED BY 'my-password';

Afterwhich I checked the hosts that the user now has access to. In my case the user is root:

SELECT host FROM mysql.user WHERE user = "root";

This gave me this output:

+-----------+
| host      |
+-----------+
| %         |
| localhost |
+-----------+

Finally, you can try connecting to the MySQL server from another server using the command:

mysql -u username -h mysql-server-ip-address -p

Where u represents user, h represents mysql-server-ip-address and p represents password. So in my case it was:

mysql -u root -h 34.69.261.158 -p

Enter your mysql user password

You should get this output depending on your MySQL server version:

Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 4
Server version: 5.7.31 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> 

Resources: How to Allow Remote Connections to MySQL

That's all.

I hope this helps