How do we block mysql from receiving ANY external queries outside of the localhost?? Basically, we don't want anyone outside of the localhost to be able to connect.

Even to the point when anyone tries to connect, it appears as if nothing is even there.

Thank you.

Well first, make sure you get rid of the anonymous user from your users table. Then if the only hostname is your users table is localhost, that "should" lock it down.

Frank

Tried that, thank you.

The concern is that the server still appears to be there as it denies connections and that leaves curiosity open to hackers.

We did however edit the /etc/my.cnf file to set the port to 0 and that appears to have work. Does anyone have any more suggestions??

Thank you.

I would be careful setting the port to 0. Many MySQL scripts connect via the mysql.socket layer and require a port specification. Changing this could break some scripts.

Another solution is to run a firewall and block all access to mysql's port. This is how we configure all of our MySQL databases.

Go to http://www.devshed.com they have an excellent article on locking down MySQL.

What I do is use the directive

skip-networking

in my /etc/my.cnf (under the [mysqld] section). After that, all connections will be done through Unix sockets instead of TCP.

skip-networking was exactly what I was looking for.

Thank you.

strange that i want to access mysql from an external IP using dreamweaver via odbc, any helo on doing that.

cheers