Bug #33416 MySQL administrator cannot find my.ini
Submitted: 20 Dec 2007 19:22 Modified: 4 Jun 2009 13:04
Reporter: Peter Brawley (Basic Quality Contributor) Email Updates:
Status: Won't fix Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Administrator Severity:S1 (Critical)
Version:1.2.12 OS:Any
Assigned to: CPU Architecture:Any
Tags: qc

[20 Dec 2007 19:22] Peter Brawley
Description:
On W2K SP4 running 5.1.22-rc, I uninstalled an earlier version of MySQL Administrator, then installed 1.2.12. On login, it produced the infamous message...

"Either the server service or the configuration file could not be found. Startup variables and service section are therefore disabled"
 
As a response to bug report #23837 (remarkably, closed!) on this problem, Mike Lischke wrote...

"there are so many possibilities where a my.ini or my.cnf file can be located and the server does not tell us which config file it used actually. So we have search it using this strategy:

"1) Get the port of the server from the connection settings.
2) Enumerate all installed and running "%mysql%" services (which implicitly leaves out any manually started server instances) and get their config files by parsing the parameter string for that service entry. They usually have a "--defaults-file=" part which contains the path to the config file.
3) Open the config file, parse it and compare the stored port value with that gotten from the connection settings.
4) If the port matches use this config file."

MySQL Administrator does not "have to" use this strategy; it could use the logic used by the server and documented at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/option-files.html. If it had done so, it would have found the copy of my.ini/cnf used by my server. 

Yes, I can probably fix this problem for this machine by editing my registry, but in a product like this, that should not be necessary. MySQL Administrator should follow the logic used by the server to choose which my.ini/cnf to use.

How to repeat:
As above
[27 Dec 2007 8:12] Valeriy Kravchuk
Thank you for a problem report.
[2 Dec 2008 10:38] jove yee
i encounter this problem when i am using "mysql-noinstall-5.1.30-win32".
i install as windows service without specifying the name and defaults-file, 
so MySQL doesn't have startup parameters.

when i open MySQL administrator 1.2.14, it says "configuration file not found, some features only available on localhost". some tab in Mysql administrator were disabled.

once i remove mySQL windows service and install again with "NAME" and "defaults-file" parameters, mySQL administrator does not have that error anymore.
[4 Jun 2009 13:04] Axel Schwenke
For a couple of reasons (see bug #23837 for a discussion) this problem will not be fixed in MySQL Administrator. We are on the way to implement full functionality of MySQL Administrator in MySQL Workbench. Workbench will then address this problem.

More information on MySQL Workbench:

http://dev.mysql.com/workbench/