character_set_client=latin1 character_set_connection=latin1 character_set_results=latin1 collation_connection=latin1 I have already tried unsuccessfully to adjust my.cnf with those values,but while restarting mysql ,the daemon does not even start. 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 Then your configuration file (‘/etc/my.cnf’ for example) should look like that: [mysqld] collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci init-connect='SET NAMES utf8' character-set-server = utf8 Restart MySQL. For making sure, your MySQL is UTF-8, run the following queries in your MySQL prompt: First query: mysql> show variables like 'char%'; But I also need to use the utf8_unicode_ci collation (instead of the default for utf8 utf8_general_ci). I love MySQL, but I believe the whole character set and collation part is an unholy mess. Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn about MySQL collation and how to set character sets and collations for the MySQL server, database, table, and column.. Introduction to MySQL collation. Il n’est en théorie presque plus nécessaire de faire des modifications dans le fichier my.cnf. Default collation in my.cnf [mysql] Posted by: Luca Accomazzi Date: September 12, 2006 07:14AM Escuse the rambling, I am quite a bit frustrated. La version 8 de MySQL a vu apparaître une nouvelle fonctionnalité qui permet de limiter l’usage des fichiers my.cnf. La plupart des paramètres peuvent être passés via une requête SQL, ce … A MySQL collation is a set of rules used to compare characters in a particular character set.Each character set in MySQL can have more than one collation, and has, at least, one default collation. How to set the default connection collation in config file? Posted by: damjan Date: August 21, 2005 10:44AM I'm using mysql-4.1.11 on Linux, and I've sucessfully setup the database to be all utf-8.