How to refer environment varibales in MySQL configuration file

Question

Is there a way to use environment variables in my.cnf? Ideally, I'd like to do something like

[client] user = $MYSQL_USER password = $MYSQL_PASSWORD host = db 

But, with the configuration above, when I try to connect to MySQL, I get

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user '$MYSQL_USER'@'188.1.1.5' (using password: YES)

Answer 1

This is not possible. MySQL does not support variables in the configuration file.

If you want to ease deployment you should look into configuration management.

Answer 2

See mysql_config_editor as a convenient way to both establish your credentials and make them reasonably secure.

Since it is a one-time setup, you don't even need the $variables after that.