Connecting MySQL 5.1 Database Remotely Using JDBC

Recently I installed MySQL 5.1 on my Ubuntu Lucid Lynx and then was trying to connect to database from my windows machine and stuck with following exception

com.mysql.jdbc.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure

Last packet sent to the server was 0 ms ago.
     at com.mysql.jdbc.SQLError.createCommunicationsException(SQLError.java:1070)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2104)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.(ConnectionImpl.java:729)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getInstance(ConnectionImpl.java:298)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:283)
     at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:512)
     at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:171)
     at com.jak.sandbox.hsm.HSMTest.testJDBC(HSMTest.java:35)
     at com.jak.sandbox.hsm.HSMTest.main(HSMTest.java:24)
Caused by: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect
     at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
     at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.doConnect(PlainSocketImpl.java:305)
     at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(PlainSocketImpl.java:171)
     at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.connect(PlainSocketImpl.java:158)
     at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:452)
     at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:402)
     at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:309)
     at java.net.Socket.(Socket.java:153)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.StandardSocketFactory.connect(StandardSocketFactory.java:256)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.(MysqlIO.java:276)
     at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2027)
 ... 7 more

After googling a lot and reading may forums finally found solution from Ubuntu Forums. Here is the deal

1. By default MySQL 5.1 allows only local connection
2. Remote connections should explicitly be turned on

As with the previous version of MySQL, where server starts with --skip-networking to prevent all TCP/IP connections, MySQL 5.1 does this by means of configuration in my.cnf file. This file stores all the configuration on how server starts. Default configuration is to prevent all TCP/IP connections. This means that if you want your JAVA application to talk to MySQL database, you will see the above mentioned exception. This default configuration is displayed in below snapshot...

So to allow TCP/IP connections just comment out the line bind-address = 127.0.0.1 and restart the server. Settings mentioned here opens up connection from any IP. So not might be a very good configuration if we think in terms of database administration or security. But for a developer like me, this suffices the requirement. Regarding database administration and security, let me not poke my nose and leave it upto smart database administrators.

[UPDATE - 22 July 2010 16:48] - Found same issue (rather default configuration) for JBoss too. When you run JBoss application server with default configuration, it will not be accessible over internet/intranet. It will be accessible only on localhost. To make it available over the internet/intranet, start JBoss with run -b 0.0.0.0 and it should work.

Cheers !!!
- Jay