How to bind my mysql server to a specific IP address

MySQL server contains a file my.cnf in /etc direcory of Linux. This file contains configuration of MySQL server as well as the configuration parameters of the MySQL client.

To make MySQL server listen on a specific IP address, you need to add a line similar to the following with IP address of your choice under mysqld section.

[root@techpulp ~]# cat /etc/my.cnf

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

# To allow mysqld to connect to a MySQL Cluster management daemon, uncomment
# these lines and adjust the connectstring as needed.
#ndbcluster
#ndb-connectstring="nodeid=4;host=localhost:1186"
bind-address=127.0.0.1
...
[root@techpulp ~]#

In my case, I configured MySQL service to bind to local host (i.e IP address 127.0.0.1). Change the highlighed line above with your own IP address.