Mysql5: Shortly – how to set charset и collation set of symbols default.

For begin look what we have:

mysql> show variables like 'character_set%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | latin1                     |
| character_set_connection | latin1                     |
| character_set_database   | latin1                     |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | latin1                     |
| character_set_server     | latin1                     |
| character_set_system     | latin1                     |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.01 sec)
mysql>  

Default Value = latin1. Now you want so all clients will use necessary charset: utf8, cp1251 or koi8r.Need add in file my.cnf next variables:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8
[mysqld]
character-set-server=utf8
collation-server=utf8_general_ci
[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

After changes reload server. If don’t work yet one more time make check:

mysql> show variables like 'character_set%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                       |
| character_set_connection | utf8                       |
| character_set_database   | utf8                       |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     |
| character_set_results    | utf8                       |
| character_set_server     | utf8                       |
| character_set_system     | utf8                       |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>

Check charset of database:

mysql> show create database yourdatabase;
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Database    | Create Database                                                      |
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| yourdatabase | CREATE DATABASE `yourdatabase` /*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */ | 
+-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Default charset for create of tables inherit.