show variables like '%character%';  +--------------------------+----------------------------+| Variable_name            | Value                      |+--------------------------+----------------------------+| character_set_client     | utf8                       || character_set_connection | utf8                       || character_set_database   | latin1                     || character_set_filesystem | binary                     || character_set_results    | utf8                       || character_set_server     | latin1                     || character_set_system     | utf8                       || character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |+--------------------------+----------------------------+8 rows in set (0.01 sec)   sudo vi /etc/mysql/my.cnf [mysqld]character_set_server=utf8 init_connect='SET NAMES utf8' sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restartmysql> show variables like '%character%';+--------------------------+----------------------------+| Variable_name            | Value                      |+--------------------------+----------------------------+| character_set_client     | utf8                       || character_set_connection | utf8                       || character_set_database   | utf8                       || character_set_filesystem | binary                     || character_set_results    | utf8                       || character_set_server     | utf8                       || character_set_system     | utf8                       || character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |+--------------------------+----------------------------+8 rows in set (0.00 sec)