The Instance Manager stores its user information in a password file. On Windows, the default is mysqlmanager.passwd in the directory where Instance Manager is installed. On Unix, the default file is /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd. To specify a different location for the password file, use the --password-file option.

If the password file does not exist or contains no password entries, you cannot connect to the Instance Manager.

Entries in the password file have the following format, where the two fields are the account user name and encrypted password, separated by a colon:

petr:*35110DC9B4D8140F5DE667E28C72DD2597B5C848

Instance Manager password encryption is the same as that used by MySQL Server. It is a one-way operation; no means are provided for decrypting encrypted passwords.

Instance Manager accounts differ somewhat from MySQL Server accounts:

This means that a client can connect to Instance Manager with a given user name from any host. To limit connections so that clients can connect only from the local host, start Instance Manager with the --bind-address=127.0.0.1 option so that it listens only to the local network interface. Remote clients will not be able to connect. Local clients can connect like this:

shell> mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -P 2273

Before MySQL 5.1.12, the only option for creating password file entries is --passwd, which causes Instance Manager to prompt for user name and password values and display the resulting entry. You can save the output in the /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd password file to store it. Here is an example:

shell> mysqlmanager --passwd >> /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd
Creating record for new user.
Enter user name: mike
Enter password: mikepass
Re-type password: mikepass

At the prompts, enter the user name and password for the new Instance Manager user. You must enter the password twice. It does not echo to the screen, so double entry guards against entering a different password than you intend (if the two passwords do not match, no entry is generated).

The preceding command causes the following line to be added to /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd:

mike:*BBF1F551DD9DD96A01E66EC7DDC073911BAD17BA

Use of the --password option fails if mysqlmanager is invoked directly from an IBM 5250 terminal. To work around this, use a command like the following from the command line to generate the password entry:

shell> mysql -B --skip-column-name \
         -e 'SELECT CONCAT("user_name",":",PASSWORD("pass_val"));'

The output from the command can be used an entry in the /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd file.

Beginning with MySQL 5.1.12, the --passwd option is renamed to --print-password-line and there are several other options for managing user accounts from the command line. For example, the --username and --password options are available on the command line for specifying the user name and password for an account entry. You can use them to generate an entry with no prompting like this (type the command on a single line):

shell> mysqlmanager --print-password-line
         --username=mike --password=mikepass >> /etc/mysqlmanager.passwd

If you omit the --username or --password option, Instance Manager prompts for the required value.

--print-password-line causes Instance Manager to send the resulting account entry to its output, which you can append to the password file. The following list describes other account-management options that cause Instance Manager to operate directly on the password file. (These options make Instance Manager scriptable for account-management purposes.) For operations on the password file to succeed, the file must exist and it must be accessible by Instance Manager. (The exception is --clean-password-file, which creates the file if it does not exist. Alternatively, if there is no password file, manually create it as an empty file and ensure that its ownership and access modes allow it to be read and written by Instance Manager.) The default password file is used unless you specify a --password-file option.

To ensure consistent treatment of the password file, it should be owned by the system account that you use for running Instance Manager to manage server instances, and you should invoke it from that account when you use it to manage accounts in the password file.