Set character_set_client to utf8mb4 in MySQL

collationMySQLutf-8

I'm trying to convert my DB to utf8mb4 following this guide. I have set:

[client]
default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mysqld]
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'
collation_server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci
character_set_server=utf8mb4
skip-character-set-client-handshake

But the value of character_set_client and character_set_results still won't change to utf8mb4.

mysql> SHOW VARIABLES WHERE Variable_name LIKE 'character\_set\_%' OR Variable_name LIKE 'collation%';
+--------------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value              |
+--------------------------+--------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8               |
| character_set_connection | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_filesystem | binary             |
| character_set_results    | utf8               |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4            |
| character_set_system     | utf8               |
| collation_connection     | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_database       | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_server         | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
+--------------------------+--------------------+

What am I doing wrong? How do I get those values set to utf8mb4?

Best Answer

Disclosure: I’m the author of How to support full Unicode in MySQL databases, the guide you’re following.

  1. Where did you save the modified settings? Check where mysqld loads the default options from. It’s usually /etc/my.cnf (as mentioned in the guide) but it may be different on your system. Run the following command to find out:

    $ mysqld --help --verbose 2> /dev/null | grep -A1 'Default options'
Default options are read from the following files in the given order:
/etc/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf /usr/local/etc/my.cnf ~/.my.cnf

  2. Did you restart mysqld by running mysqld restart after making the changes?

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