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Using Option Files

Most MySQL programs can read startup options from option files (also sometimes called configuration

files). Option files provide a convenient way to specify commonly used options so that they need not be

entered on the command linę each time you run a program. For the MySQL server, MySQL provides a number of preconfigured option files.

To determine whether a program reads option files, invoke it with the --help option. (For mysqld, use

—verbose [460] and—help [427].) If the program reads option files, the help message indicates

which files it looks for and which option groups it recognizes.

The .mylogin.cnf file that contains login path options is created by the

mysql_config_editor

utility. See Section 4.6.6, “mysql_conf ig_editor — MySQL Configuration Utility”. A “login path" is

an option group that permits only a limited set of options: host, user, and password. Client programs

specify which login path to read from .mylogin.cnf using the — login-path [230] option.

To specify an alternate file name, set the mysql_test_login_file environment variable.

This variable is used by the mysql-test-run.pl testing utility, but also is recognized by

mysql_conf ig_editor and by MySQL clients such as mysql, mysqladmin, and so forth.