A.4.5 How to Protect or Change the MySQL Socket File `/tmp/mysql.sock'

If you have problems with the fact that anyone can delete the MySQL communication socket `/tmp/mysql.sock', you can, on most versions of Unix, protect your `/tmp' filesystem by setting the sticky bit on it. Log in as root and do the following:

shell> chmod +t /tmp

This will protect your `/tmp' filesystem so that files can be deleted only by their owners or the superuser (root).

You can check if the sticky bit is set by executing ls -ld /tmp. If the last permission bit is t, the bit is set.

You can change the place where MySQL uses / puts the socket file the following ways:

• Specify the path in a global or local option file. For example, put in /etc/my.cnf:

  [client]
  socket=path-for-socket-file
  
  [mysqld]
  socket=path-for-socket-file
  

  See section 4.1.2 `my.cnf' Option Files.
• Specifying this on the command-line to mysqld_safe and most clients with the --socket=path-for-socket-file option.
• Specify the path to the socket in the MYSQL_UNIX_PORT environment variable.
• Defining the path with the configure option --with-unix-socket-path=path-for-socket-file. See section 2.3.3 Typical configure Options.

You can test that the socket works with this command:

shell> mysqladmin --socket=/path/to/socket version

User Comments

My time zone is EDT, and I'm inserting a DateTime
value of "2002-10-27 01:00:00". This datetime
happens to be on the night that we come off of
Daylight savings time, so at 2am the clock goes
back 1 hour and it's 1am again. So 1am occurs
twice during this day and my insert is
ambiguous. Which "1am" will get inserted the
first or the second occurance? Well when I do
the insert, the datetime seems to go in as the
second occurance (6am GMT). How can I insert a
datetime value that refers to the first 1am??
(the one that occurs at 5am GMT)??? Is there any
way to insert and retrieve a datetime using GMT?

Is there any way to insert and retrieve a
datetime using GMT?You could use
seconds from epoch; i.e. a UNIX timestamp.

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