MYSQL remote connection require SSL

I'm seeking to clear some information up for myself involving remote SSL connections to MYSQL. Particularly, once I have MYSQL setup to enable SSL and have a remote user that requires SSL.

This is how I connect (commandline), remotely, to MYSQL with a user that requires SSL:

mysql -uMyUserName -p -h192.168.5.5 --ssl-ca /path/to/ca.pem

My question is: Why do I have to provide the ca.pem file as the client?

These are the steps I took to install mysql on the server and setup remote access (Ubuntu):

Steps to Enable SSL for MYSQL

1) Obtain my Certificate Authority cert, Database cert, Database key

ca.pem (Certificate Authority cert)
dbcert.pem (Database cert)
dbkey.pem (Databse key)

2) Add the following lines to /etc/mysql/my.cnf under [mysqld]

ssl-ca=/path/to/ca.pem
ssl-cert=/path/to/dbcert.pem
ssl-key=/path/to/dbkey.pem

3) Restart mysql and confirm ssl enabled by logging in and typing following:

show variables like '%ssl%';

Configure Remote Connection Requiring SSL

1) Comment out the following lines in /etc/mysql/my.cnf

#bind-address
#skip-networking

2) Login to mysql and grant a user access to, in this case, every database

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON . to 'USERNAME'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD' REQUIRE SSL

At this point, I have MYSQL setup to enable SSL && I have a remote user that will require SSL to login. I am able to login on a remote commandline, but i need to specify the --ssl-ca.

Why do I have to provide the ssl-ca from client? Is there a way to do this so that I don't have to?

I would really appreciate some insight here.

Thanks in advance.

Unlike your typical web browser, a commandline tool like mysql doesn't have a built-in list of certificate authorities. Browsers come with a built in list of certification authorities, and you implicitly trust them (whether you know it or not).

When you use mysql to log in to a MySQL server supporting encryption, that server will present you the public part of a certificate. To complete the secure handshake, your client needs to verify the server certificate is signed by a trusted certificate authority. Otherwise, it will have to say "hey, this looks like a well-formed certificate, but I never heard of the ca signing it."

For Hibernate / JDBC / TLS, a little bit of search-engine work turns up some useful suggestions. It's all about setting the right properties in your config.

http://razorsql.com/articles/mysql_ssl_jdbc.html

How can I configure Hibernate to use SSL to talk to the DB server?