The MySQL Keyring Type String The password used by the  keyring_encrypted_file  plugin. This variable is unavailable unless that plugin is installed. This variable is mandatory. If not specified,  keyring_encrypted_file  initialization fails. If this variable is specified in an option file, the file should have a restrictive mode and be accessible only to the account used to run the MySQL server. Once the  keyring_encrypted_file_password  value has been set, changing it does not rotate the keyring password and could make the server inaccessible. If an incorrect password is provided, the keyring_encrypted_file  plugin cannot load keys from the encrypted keyring file. Important Command-Line Format --keyring-file-data=file_name System Variable keyring_file_data Scope Global Dynamic Yes SET_VAR  Hint Applies No Type File name Default Value platform specific INSTALL_LAYOUT  Value Default  keyring_file_data  Value DEB ,  RPM ,  SVR4 /var/lib/mysql-keyring/keyring 1453 The default file name is  keyring , located in a directory that is platform specific and depends on the value of the  INSTALL_LAYOUT CMake  option, as shown in the following table. To specify the default directory for the file explicitly if you are building from source, use the  INSTALL_MYSQLKEYRINGDIR CMake  option. Do not use the same  keyring_file  data file for multiple MySQL instances. Each instance should have its own unique data file. Keyring operations are transactional: The  keyring_file  plugin uses a backup file during write operations to ensure that it can roll back to the original file if an operation fails. The backup file has the same name as the value of the  keyring_file_data  system variable with a suffix of  .backup . The path name of the data file used for secure data storage by the  keyring_file  plugin. This variable is unavailable unless that plugin is installed. The file location should be in a directory considered for use only by keyring plugins. For example, do not locate the file under the data directory. The password value cannot be displayed at runtime with  SHOW VARIABLES  or the Performance Schema global_variables  table because the display value is obfuscated. • keyring_file_data