Making MySQL work with utf-8 in my.cnf configuration file

Question

I'm having troubles trying to change the character sets in MySQL. I'm trying to edit the file "/etc/my.cnf" with the information taken from "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3513773/change-mysql-default-character-set-to-utf8-in-my-cnf". The problem is, that adding this information to my file (and many others taken from the internet), the MySQL server doesn't start (when rebooting to implement the changes). I get this message:

[root@tribals ~] # /etc/init.d/mysql restart
Shutting down MySQL.. SUCCESS!
Starting MySQL................................... ERROR!

To be more specific I'll also post the contents of the "my.cnf" file:

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

[client]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysqld]
max_connections=200
query_cache_type=1
query_cache_size=2M
query_cache_limit=1M
ft_min_word_len=2
ft_max_word_len=20
ft_stopword_file=''

I'm adding the new content about charsets at the bottom of the file, right after the last line. Here is the code I'm adding:

default-character-set = utf8    
collation-server = utf8_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8'
character-set-server = utf8

Thanks!

Edit: Hi, here's what the log says:

111111 20:18:00  mysqld started 111111 20:18:00  InnoDB: Started; log sequence number 0 72790
111111 20:18:00 [Warning] './mysql/host' had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed
111111 20:18:00 [Warning] './mysql/user' had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed
111111 20:18:00 [Warning] './mysql/db' had no or invalid character set, and default character set is multi-byte, so character column sizes may have changed
111111 20:18:00 [ERROR] Fatal error: mysql.user table is damaged or in unsupported 3.20 format.
111111 20:18:00  mysqld ended

PD: Sorry, I'm new to this, couldn't find how to do it...

I think MySQL 4 doesn't support UTF8. Are you sure it's supported? — santiagobasulto, Nov 11 '11 at 23:29
4.1 version can: "MySQL supports the use of character sets for the MyISAM, MEMORY, and (as of MySQL 4.1.2) InnoDB storage engines." — Diego, Nov 11 '11 at 23:39

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 12 '11 at 00:08

Got it!!! Looks like this is a problem when updating MySQL versions, in my case, from 3.2 to 4.1.22. The thing is that the privilege tables must be updated too, but somehow they weren't. So, I logged into the server as root via SSH and executed the command:

mysql_fix_privilege_tables --password=[your_root_pass]

That's it! Hope it helps others in my situation...

Making MySQL work with utf-8 in my.cnf configuration file

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