Chapter 12 Environment Variables

This section lists environment variables that are used directly or indirectly by MySQL. Most of these can also be found in other places in this manual.

Options on the command line take precedence over values specified in option files and environment variables, and values in option files take precedence over values in environment variables. In many cases, it is preferable to use an option file instead of environment variables to modify the behavior of MySQL. See Using Option Files.

Variable	Description
AUTHENTICATION_KERBEROS_CLIENT_LOG	Kerberos authentication logging level.
AUTHENTICATION_LDAP_CLIENT_LOG	Client-side LDAP authentication logging level.
AUTHENTICATION_PAM_LOG	PAM authentication plugin debug logging settings.
CC	The name of your C compiler (for running CMake).
CXX	The name of your C++ compiler (for running CMake).
CC	The name of your C compiler (for running CMake).
DBI_USER	The default user name for Perl DBI.
DBI_TRACE	Trace options for Perl DBI.
HOME	The default path for the mysql history file is $HOME/.mysql_history.
LD_RUN_PATH	Used to specify the location of libmysqlclient.so.
LIBMYSQL_ENABLE_CLEARTEXT_PLUGIN	Enable mysql_clear_password authentication plugin; see Client-Side Cleartext Pluggable Authentication.
LIBMYSQL_PLUGIN_DIR	Directory in which to look for client plugins.
LIBMYSQL_PLUGINS	Client plugins to preload.
MYSQL_DEBUG	Debug trace options when debugging.
MYSQL_GROUP_SUFFIX	Option group suffix value (like specifying --defaults-group-suffix).
MYSQL_HISTFILE	The path to the mysql history file. If this variable is set, its value overrides the default for $HOME/.mysql_history.
MYSQL_HISTIGNORE	Patterns specifying statements that mysql should not log to $HOME/.mysql_history, or syslog if --syslog is given.
MYSQL_HOME	The path to the directory in which the server-specific my.cnf file resides.
MYSQL_HOST	The default host name used by the mysql command-line client.
MYSQL_OPENSSL_UDF_DH_BITS_THRESHOLD	Maximum key length for create_dh_parameters(). See MySQL Enterprise Encryption Usage and Examples.
MYSQL_OPENSSL_UDF_DSA_BITS_THRESHOLD	Maximum DSA key length for create_asymmetric_priv_key(). See MySQL Enterprise Encryption Usage and Examples.
MYSQL_OPENSSL_UDF_RSA_BITS_THRESHOLD	Maximum RSA key length for create_asymmetric_priv_key(). See MySQL Enterprise Encryption Usage and Examples.
MYSQL_PS1	The command prompt to use in the mysql command-line client.
MYSQL_PWD	The default password when connecting to mysqld. Using this is insecure. See note following table.
MYSQL_TCP_PORT	The default TCP/IP port number.
MYSQL_TEST_LOGIN_FILE	The name of the .mylogin.cnf login path file.
MYSQL_TEST_TRACE_CRASH	Whether the test protocol trace plugin crashes clients. See note following table.
MYSQL_TEST_TRACE_DEBUG	Whether the test protocol trace plugin produces output. See note following table.
MYSQL_UNIX_PORT	The default Unix socket file name; used for connections to localhost.
MYSQLX_TCP_PORT	The X Plugin default TCP/IP port number.
MYSQLX_UNIX_PORT	The X Plugin default Unix socket file name; used for connections to localhost.
NOTIFY_SOCKET	Socket used by mysqld to communicate with systemd.
PATH	Used by the shell to find MySQL programs.
PKG_CONFIG_PATH	Location of mysqlclient.pc pkg-config file. See note following table.
TMPDIR	The directory in which temporary files are created.
TZ	This should be set to your local time zone. See Time Zone Problems.
UMASK	The user-file creation mode when creating files. See note following table.
UMASK_DIR	The user-directory creation mode when creating directories. See note following table.
USER	The default user name on Windows when connecting to mysqld.

For information about the mysql history file, see mysql Client Logging.

Use of MYSQL_PWD to specify a MySQL password must be considered extremely insecure and should not be used. Some versions of ps include an option to display the environment of running processes. On some systems, if you set MYSQL_PWD, your password is exposed to any other user who runs ps. Even on systems without such a version of ps, it is unwise to assume that there are no other methods by which users can examine process environments.

MYSQL_PWD is deprecated as of MySQL 8.0; expect it to be removed in a future version of MySQL.

MYSQL_TEST_LOGIN_FILE is the path name of the login path file (the file created by mysql_config_editor). If not set, the default value is %APPDATA%\MySQL\.mylogin.cnf directory on Windows and $HOME/.mylogin.cnf on non-Windows systems. See mysql_config_editor — MySQL Configuration Utility.

The MYSQL_TEST_TRACE_DEBUG and MYSQL_TEST_TRACE_CRASH variables control the test protocol trace client plugin, if MySQL is built with that plugin enabled. For more information, see Using the Test Protocol Trace Plugin.

The default UMASK and UMASK_DIR values are 0640 and 0750, respectively. MySQL assumes that the value for UMASK or UMASK_DIR is in octal if it starts with a zero. For example, setting UMASK=0600 is equivalent to UMASK=384 because 0600 octal is 384 decimal.

The UMASK and UMASK_DIR variables, despite their names, are used as modes, not masks:

• If UMASK is set, mysqld uses ($UMASK | 0600) as the mode for file creation, so that newly created files have a mode in the range from 0600 to 0666 (all values octal).

• If UMASK_DIR is set, mysqld uses ($UMASK_DIR | 0700) as the base mode for directory creation, which then is AND-ed with ~(~$UMASK & 0666), so that newly created directories have a mode in the range from 0700 to 0777 (all values octal). The AND operation may remove read and write permissions from the directory mode, but not execute permissions.

See also Problems with File Permissions.

It may be necessary to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH if you use pkg-config for building MySQL programs. See Building C API Client Programs Using pkg-config.