MySQL From Remote Host

I couldn't get MySQL Administrator on a Windows XP desktop to connect to a MySQL instance I had running on an Ubuntu 6.06 server that I built as a LAMP server. I was getting:

Could not connect to the specified instance.

MySQL Error Number 2003
Can't connect to MySQL server on 'server' (10061)

I had to edit /etc/my.cnf (or /etc/mysql/my.cnf depending on where yours is stored) on the Ubuntu server to comment out the "bind-address" line, then restart the server. I also had to add a non-root user with all privileges. In fact, you have to add two users as described here:

use mysql
grant all privileges on *.* to 'user'@'localhost' identified by 'password' with grant option;
grant all privileges on *.* to 'user'@'%' identified by 'password' with grant option;
flush privileges;

There are some posts that show how to enable remote logins by the MySQL "root" user, but I prefer not to do it that way.

Bacula Catalog Job and MySQL

To make the Bacula catalog job work:

1. Edit /etc/bacula/bacula-dir.conf on the backup server
2. Change where it says -u -p to -u bacula
3. Edit ~bacula/.my.cnf and put this:

[client]
password=your_secret_password

4. chmod 400 ~bacula/.my.cnf ; chown bacula:bacula ~bacula/.my.cnf

Now it should work. Don't forget to do "reload" in bconsole.