[CentOS] No MySQL password in ps aux!

Sun Sep 11 16:35:21 UTC 2011
Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com>

On Sun, 2011-09-11 at 19:32 +0300, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> I just noticed that some CentOS 4 or 5 machine that I don't admin but
> have root access to hides MySQL passwords from ps:
> 
> Console 1:
> $ mysql -u root -pSECRET
> mysql >
> 
> Console2:
> # ps aux
> root     32165  0.0  0.1 109408  2204 pts/1    Ss+  11:19   0:00 mysql
> -u root -px xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> That is really nice, is it a MySQL feature or a CentOS feature? I have
> some other servers that I _do_ admin and I'd like to enable this.
----
you'd still have it in bash_history though so it's really a poor idea to
ever pass a significant password directly on the command line execution
- whether visible or not visible to ps. Much better is to be prompted
for the password instead...

mysql mysql -u root -p

and it will prompt

another option is to have ~/.my.cnf which already has your password

Craig


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