MySQL my.cnf file - Found option without preceding

Question

I'm trying to connect to my DB in Ubuntu remotely but I receive error message when trying to mysql -u root -p:

Found option without preceding group in config file: /etc/mysql/my.cnf at line: 1

my.cnf looks like:

[mysqld]
user        = mysql
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port        = 3306
basedir     = /usr
datadir     = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir      = /tmp
bind-address        =  0.0.0.0
key_buffer      = 16M
max_allowed_packet  = 16M
thread_stack        = 192K
thread_cache_size       = 8
myisam-recover         = BACKUP
query_cache_limit   = 1M
query_cache_size        = 16M
log_error                = /var/log/mysql/error.log
expire_logs_days    = 10
max_binlog_size         = 100M

[client]
port        = 3306
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

[mysqld_safe]
socket      = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
nice        = 0

[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet  = 16M

[mysql]

[isamchk]
key_buffer      = 16M

Answer 1

it is because of letters or digit infront of [mysqld] just check the leeters or digit anything is not required before [mysqld]

it may be something like

0[mysqld] then this error will occur

Answer 2

Just add [mysqld] as first line of your /etc/mysql/my.cnf file

And then

sudo mysqld stop sudo mysqld start

Answer 3

Check the charset encoding of the file, make sure that it is in ASCII . Use the 'od' command to see if there is a UTF-8 BOM at the beginning, for example.