Every now and again it’s time to setup a new machine and I wrestle with getting MySQL to observe my custom bind_address and other settings. Which settings file should I override and in which order are they consumed by the MySQL server, anyway?
mysql --help
The output from the above command contains the answer. Aside from some typical help file stuff about various options and switches, it also shows the value of various server variables and contains a section like this example, from which you can learn the order in which MySQL loads .cnf files:
Default options are read from the following files in the given order: /etc/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf ~/.my.cnf The following groups are read: mysql client
Now I know the order of precedence, as well as the groups that are actually read in.