Obdc, jdbc or named pipes

Virtualmin
1

Hi guys
I have someone who wants to connect to a mysql database using Open Office. The choices are Obdc, jdbc or named pipes. Neither of which I know much about.

  1. Which method is the most secure/reliable?

  2. Is there a virtualmin/webmin module that will help with configuring either?

2

Howdy,

I’m not sure which connection method to recommend :slight_smile:

If they allow you to specify a remote host, I suspect it’ll work fine.

But in Virtualmin, you’d want to make sure that in Edit Databases -> Remote Hosts, that the IP address of the remote host they’ll be connecting from is listed in there.

-Eric

3

Hi Eric

Thanks for your previous reply.

I entered the IP address of the remote host in Edit Databases -> Remote Hosts but we are still unable to make the connection. I have done quite a lot of research and it looks like if the MySQL server listening address it set to 127.0.0.1(which it is) then no connections can be made for outside. According to what I have read the MySQL server listening address needs to be set to 0.0.0.0 . But before I go ahead and change it I thought I would ask

are there any security concerns with setting MySQL server listening address to 0.0.0.0 ?

and

if yes can they be with settings in webmin or iptables?

or

is there another way to achieve this from within webmin.

Also do I need to set Host Permissions?

4

are there any security concerns with setting MySQL server listening address to 0.0.0.0 ?

Sure! If there weren’t, it’d be that way by default :slight_smile:

I wouldn’t put MySQL on 0.0.0.0 unless I had to.

Though, you could always add additional firewall rules to make sure only your intended hosts can access it. Firewall rules can be setup in Webmin -> Networking -> Linux Firewall.

-Eric

5

Hi Eric
As it turns out even if MySQL is put on 0.0.0.0 and the fire wall is turned off (which was only done for a few minutes for testing) a connection can not be made to the MySQL database.

I noticed in Virtualmin> System Settings> Server Templates> Default Settings> MySQL database> there is a field “Allowed MySQL client hosts” and in the help it sais

Allowed MySQL client hosts
If additional hosts should be allowed to query the MySQL database, you may specify them here. This could be useful if this system is used as a database server and other machines will use the database. Security precautions should be followed to insure illicit access is not unintentionally allowed.

But I cannot find any corresponding setting in Virtualmin to allow additional hosts to query the MySQL database after the virtual server has been created. Is there such a thing.

Or can you recommend a way for additional hosts to be allowed to query the MySQL database.

Thanks
AllanIt

6

Howdy,

Well, there’s only two things you should need to tweak as far as MySQL goes:

  1. Change what port it runs on

  2. Go into Edit Databases -> Remote Hosts, and making sure your IP is listed there next to the user

The option you’re looking at in the Server Templates would make it so that #2 above would be handled automatically for you, each time a new database is added. Changing the Server Templates would only assist on new databases though, it wouldn’t change existing ones. So you’d still need to go into Edit Databases -> Remote Hosts to handle that for existing ones.

-Eric