MySQL - All about Configuration File

What My.cnf File Was Used To Start The Instance

Often it is not clear that configuration file is used to boot a MySQL instance. In this case we will see a trick for Windows. First of all if we execute the following command;

C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.7\bin>mysql –help

In one part of the output that gives us, we see the following;

Default options are read from the following files in the given order:
C:\Windows\my.ini C:\Windows\my.cnf C:\my.ini C:\my.cnf C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.7\my.ini C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.7\my.cnf

Here indicates the file name and order to search for the file of parameters. The easiest trick in Windows, as long as we have installed MySQL as a service, remember that Windows can be installed as application  although I do not recommend this option. It is to see service properties as shown in the following screen shot;