Once you have installed MySQL onto OS X / OS X server, MySQL will basically run OK under a light load. You can see what tweaks you might need to make with a fine tuning MySQL script aptly named mysqltuner.pl, this script can make suggestions that you need to load into your MySQL configuration file.

my.cnf

To change some variables to the database server you have to edit configuration file ‘my.cnf’ which you will notice that there isn’t one filed in the root directory /etc.  This is the default behaviour as a part of the OS X installation and MySQL runs Ok without it.

The actual MySQL data is stored at:

 /usr/local/mysql/data

Some sample my.cnf configuration files for MySQL 5.5.X are found at :

 /usr/local/mysql/support-files/

Named my-small.cnf my-medium.cnf my-large.cnfand my-huge.cnf files – if you want your own my.cnf for mysql file that you need to edit, pick the one that suits your environment and make a copy of it into /etc

 sudo cp /usr/local/mysql/support-files/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf

If you have MySQL 5.6.X ,the default my.cnf is found at:

 /usr/local/mysql/my.cnf

Copy that to /etc

sudo cp /usr/local/mysql/my.cnf /etc/my.cnf

Make your adjustments to it and restart MySQL

 sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server restart

Run the mysql tuner script

To make recommended adjustments let the database run for over 24 hrs before running the script.

Then download and run mysqltuner.pl script:

 sudo -s

 cd /usr/bin/

 sudo curl -O https://raw.github.com/major/MySQLTuner-perl/master/mysqltuner.pl

 sudo chmod 755 mysqltuner.pl

Run the Script and Look for the Recommendations

mysqltuner.pl

The important output returned to you is in the ‘Variables to Adjust’ section…

Take these recommendations and add/adjust them into your /etc/my.cnf file

Restart MySQL for these settings to take affect

 sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server restart