How to set the default character-set?

Question

I want to create a new db in mysql. I set utf8 as the default-character-set, but when I attempted to restart the db, mysql failed to restart and posted the following prompt:

Answer 1

Had the same issue today, but with version 5.7.31. For me commenting the line did work but.. how to set the character set in config files then ?

There's a reply: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/charset-applications.html

So, to specify character settings at server startup we can for example add these lines in two files (for me these were: 50-client.cnf and 50-mysql-clients.cnf - both in /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/ directory):

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

Remember about the "mysqld" section, it is important, because in the "client" section this won't work.