mysql> show variables like 'character%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                            |
+--------------------------+----------------------------------+
| character_set_client     | latin1                           |
| character_set_connection | latin1                           |
| character_set_database   | latin1                           |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                           |
| character_set_results    | latin1                           |
| character_set_server     | latin1                           |
| character_set_system     | utf8                             |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/share/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.03 sec)

从结果可以看出，MySQL字符集涉及到：

• 客户端使用的字符集：character_set_client

• 客户端域服务器之间的连接使用的字符集：character_set_connection

• 数据库实例使用的字符集：character_set_database

• MySQL服务器使用的字符集：character_set_serve

这些字符集都可以在配置文件 my.cnf 里配置，增加如下配置：

[client]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8

[mysqld]
character-set-server=utf8

修改后要重启MySQL服务。