Authentication Plugins To load the plugins and set the LDAP server host and base distinguished name for LDAP bind operations, put lines such as these in your  my.cnf  file, adjusting the  .so  suffix for your platform as necessary: After modifying  my.cnf , restart the server to cause the new settings to take effect. Alternatively, to load the plugins at runtime, use these statements, adjusting the  .so  suffix for your platform as necessary: INSTALL PLUGIN  loads the plugin immediately, and also registers it in the  mysql.plugins  system table to cause the server to load it for each subsequent normal startup without the need for  --plugin-load- add . After installing the plugins at runtime, their system variables become available and you can add settings for them to your  my.cnf  file to configure the plugins for subsequent restarts. For example: After modifying  my.cnf , restart the server to cause the new settings to take effect. Alternatively, to set and persist the values at runtime, use these statements: SET PERSIST  sets the value for the running MySQL instance. It also saves the value, causing it to carry over to subsequent server restarts. To change a value for the running MySQL instance without having it carry over to subsequent restarts, use the  GLOBAL  keyword rather than  PERSIST . See Section 13.7.6.1, “SET Syntax for Variable Assignment” . To verify plugin installation, examine the  INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PLUGINS  table or use the  SHOW PLUGINS  statement (see Section 5.6.2, “Obtaining Server Plugin Information” ). For example: If a plugin fails to initialize, check the server error log for diagnostic messages. 1337 mysql>  SELECT PLUGIN_NAME, PLUGIN_STATUS FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PLUGINS WHERE PLUGIN_NAME LIKE ’%ldap%’; +----------------------------+---------------+ | PLUGIN_NAME | PLUGIN_STATUS | +----------------------------+---------------+ | authentication_ldap_sasl | ACTIVE | | authentication_ldap_simple | ACTIVE | +----------------------------+---------------+ SET PERSIST authentication_ldap_simple_server_host=’127.0.0.1’; SET PERSIST authentication_ldap_simple_bind_base_dn=’dc=example,dc=com’; SET PERSIST authentication_ldap_sasl_server_host=’127.0.0.1’; SET PERSIST authentication_ldap_sasl_bind_base_dn=’dc=example,dc=com’; [mysqld] authentication_ldap_simple_server_host=127.0.0.1 authentication_ldap_simple_bind_base_dn="dc=example,dc=com" authentication_ldap_sasl_server_host=127.0.0.1 authentication_ldap_sasl_bind_base_dn="dc=example,dc=com" INSTALL PLUGIN authentication_ldap_simple SONAME ’authentication_ldap_simple.so’; INSTALL PLUGIN authentication_ldap_sasl SONAME ’authentication_ldap_sasl.so’; [mysqld] plugin-load-add=authentication_ldap_simple.so authentication_ldap_simple_server_host=127.0.0.1 authentication_ldap_simple_bind_base_dn="dc=example,dc=com" plugin-load-add=authentication_ldap_sasl.so authentication_ldap_sasl_server_host=127.0.0.1 authentication_ldap_sasl_bind_base_dn="dc=example,dc=com"