Peter Humphrey wrote:

Afternoon all,

I have mysql running on my workstation and on my local server, and I want to connect as an ordinary user from the workstation to the server; I can't. This is what happens:

$ mysql -p -h serv.ethnet
Enter password:
ERROR 2003 (HY000): Can't connect to MySQL server on 'serv.ethnet' (111)

The same thing happens if I try as root.

I can connect locally as myself or as root on either machine and manipulate tables in various ways. I haven't yet installed a firewall on either machine.

I've set DEBUG=4 in /etc/conf.d/mysql on both machines, but nothing shows up in /var/log/mysql/*; only some startup debug messages. I've run tcpdump on the server, which shows that one packet passes in each direction, followed immediately by a reverse lookup of the workstation being sent to the name server. I don't know why nothing happens after the name-service request is answered, but it seems to imply that the workstation is refusing the request itself rather than forwarding it to the server.

I can't see anything in /etc/conf.d/mysql or in /etc/mysql/* on either machine to restrict network access, so what have I missed?

Check the bind-address setting in /etc/my.cnf - if this is 127.0.0.1 then no other machines will be able to connect to the mysql server. To listen on all available interfaces, this setting should be "0.0.0.0" or unset.

Also check that skip-networking is not enabled.