How to Find the MYSQL Configuration File “my.cnf”.

The primary configuration file for the MySQL database server is called my.cnf. It includes several options and parameters needed to efficiently operate your MySQL database. My.cnf file editing is frequently required by database administrators to personalize their database installation.

In this article, We’ll discuss how to locate my.cnf file in MySQL. No matter how skilled or inexperienced they are, this is often a problem that many database administrators and developers encounter.

Approach 1: Default location

Depending on your OS and the kind of installation, the my.cnf file is often placed in one of these five locations.

* /etc/my.cnf
* /etc/mysql/my.cnf
* $MYSQL_HOME/my.cnf
* [datadir]/my.cnf
* ~/.my.cnf

Normally, your system should only include one of these files. However, if there are many files, MySQL will load each one individually, and the values from one file will be replaced by those from the next. 

To find out where your database’s my.cnf is by default, use the command line.

$ mysql --help | grep /my.cnf

You’ll get results like the ones listed below.

Output:

The above files are read for default parameters in the specified order.

Approach 2: location in multiple forms

Here are a few other instructions to locate my.cnf file.

$ mysqladmin --help

OR
$ mysqld --help --verbose

Output:

In the output, In the last 2nd line we can see the location of my.cnf file in multiple forms and locations.

The following places may be where MySQL is installed, depending on the OS.

Default locations for Linux:
/etc/my.cnf
/etc/mysql/my.cnf
/usr/etc/my.cnf
~/.my.cnf

The default places of my.cnf file in the windows operating system.

Default locations for Windows:
C:\Windows\my.ini
C:\Windows\my.cnf
C:\my.ini
C:\my.cnf
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\my.ini
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\my.cnf

Try the following command if any of these does not work then try the below command:

$ find / -name my.cnf

In this article, we learned how to locate my.cnf file in Windows and Linux. The macOS terminal also supports these commands.