How to configure global charset on MySQL

Question

I tried to change the charset for our MySQL via my.cnf and it failed. I added the charset settings listed below:

# The MySQL server
[mysqld]
port            = 3306
socket          = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
skip-locking
key_buffer = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_cache = 64
sort_buffer_size = 512K
net_buffer_length = 8K
read_buffer_size = 256K
read_rnd_buffer_size = 512K
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M

# ------------- MYSQL CHARSETS --------------
character_set_system = utf8
character_set_server = utf8
character_set_results = utf8
character_set_database = utf8
character_set_connection = utf8
character_set_client = utf8

collation_connection = utf8_general_ci
collation_database = utf8_general_ci
collation_server = utf8_general_ci

When I had these enabled, MySQL failed to start. How can I make sure everything defaults to utf8 - always?

Update

There are still a few places having issues in being UTF8

character_set_client    utf8
character_set_connection    utf8
character_set_database  latin1
character_set_filesystem    binary
character_set_results   utf8
character_set_server    latin1
character_set_system    utf8
character_sets_dir  /usr/share/mysql/charsets/
collation_connection    utf8_general_ci
collation_database  latin1_swedish_ci
collation_server    latin1_swedish_ci

Unfortunately I still haven't come up with a soluton... any ideas?

Currently I'm using this configuration successfully:

[mysqld]
default-character-set = utf8
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8


[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8

But PHPMyAdmin is still showing some latin1

character_set_client    utf8
character_set_connection    utf8
character_set_database  latin1
character_set_filesystem    binary
character_set_results   utf8
character_set_server    latin1
character_set_system    utf8
character_sets_dir  /usr/share/mysql/charsets/
collation_connection    utf8_general_ci
collation_database  latin1_swedish_ci
collation_server    latin1_swedish_ci

Answer 1

You need to incorporate the following into your my.cnf file

[client]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8


[mysqld]
default-character-set = utf8    
collation-server = utf8_general_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8

You can find more information on the following manual pages

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/charset-configuration.html

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_character_set_system

• http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_character_set_server

In response to Mark's answer, if you need to convert existing tables/databases to the correct character set you will need a suitable ALTER query. Something similar to the below:

ALTER TABLE `table` CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

Alternatively there's a great PHP script here which does it for you.

Answer 2

Ben's answer is ok, but changing the settings will ABSOLUTELY NOT alter existing tables character sets or collations. Do that with an appropriate ALTER TABLE statement.

Note that if you don't specify it, tables are created in the database default character set. This is a per-database setting which can be adjusted with ALTER DATABASE. This is also not set in my.cnf.