The guys from freenode IRC server #mysql channel clarified the situation:

remove bind-address= and skip-networking from my.cnf and grant permission to the external 'user'@'host' and remove any firewall rules blocking port 3306 and make sure no overrides on the mysqld commandline. See http://hashmysql.org/index.php?title=Remote_Clients_Cannot_Connect


bind-address is exclusive, not inclusive, it limits mysql server to what interface to listen on for incoming connections


Imagine, you have a table:

mysql> describe test_table;
+-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type    | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| val   | int(11) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+-------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+

And you have following SQL script with an error in the middle:

insert into test_table (val) values (1);
insert into test_table (val) values (2a);
insert into test_table (val) values (3);

Traditionally, you would use the following way to import data:

mah@mah-laptop:~/Desktop$ mysql -u username db -p < data.sql
Enter password:
ERROR 1054 (42S22) at line 2: Unknown column '2a' in 'field list'

And in this case, test_table would contain only the data up to the failing line:

mysql> select * from test_table;
+------+
| val  |
+------+
|    1 |
+------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)

Another way to import data is through MySQL source command:

mysql> source /home/mah/Desktop/datasql
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column '2a' in 'field list'
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

And in this case all valid statements will be executed:

mysql> select * from test_table;
+------+
| val  |
+------+
|    1 |
|    3 |
+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

• Remove or comment out skip-networking option (by default in latest versions of MySQL this version is not present in configuration file)
• add (or modify) bind-address with ip of your machine on which MySQL is running

In this example we will use Ubuntu machine. We will use MySQL driver for HDBC from HackageDB.

First, we need to install MySQL server:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Then we need MySQL client library:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

Then, we install HDBC MySQL driver using Cabal:

http://hackage.haskell.org/package/HDBC-mysql

And you are ready to write some code!

module DatabaseTest where

import Database.HDBC
import Database.HDBC.MySQL

main =
   do conn <- connectMySQL defaultMySQLConnectInfo {
                  mysqlHost = "localhost",
                  mysqlDatabase = "db",
                  mysqlUser = "user",
                  mysqlPassword = "pass",
                  mysqlUnixSocket = "/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock" }
      quickQuery conn "INSERT INTO test VALUES (1)" []

echo off
cls

echo Starting MySQL mysql-essential-5.0.88-win32 install
msiexec /i "mysql-essential-5.0.88-win32" /qn INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\MySQL" /L* "C:\Program Files\MySQL\mysql-log.txt"
echo MySQL mysql-essential-5.0.88-win32 installed successfully

echo Creating MySQL Windows service
"C:\Program Files\MySQL\bin\mysqlinstanceconfig.exe" -i -q ServiceName="MySQL service" RootPassword="newRootPassword" ServerType=SERVER DatabaseType=MYISAM Port=3306 RootCurrentPassword=mysql
echo MySQL Instance Configured. Service started.

Which can be conveniently parametrized with your installation packager, for example:

echo off
cls

echo Starting MySQL ${mysql-msi} install
msiexec /i "${mysql-msi}" /qn INSTALLDIR="${INSTALL_PATH}\${mysql-dir}" /L* "${INSTALL_PATH}\mysql-log.txt"
echo MySQL ${mysql-msi} installed successfully

echo Creating MySQL Windows service
"${INSTALL_PATH}\${mysql-dir}\bin\mysqlinstanceconfig.exe" -i -q ServiceName="${mysql-service-name}" RootPassword="${mysql-password}" ServerType=SERVER DatabaseType=MYISAM Port=3306 RootCurrentPassword=mysql
echo MySQL Instance Configured. Service started.

But do not forget that if you want to ship MySQL with your product, you have to have an official permission from MySQL. Another option would be to ask user to download executable and provide a location to it int your installer.