If you've recently upgraded to MySQL 5.1.45, you might experience a problem running mysql client. The error message says: /usr/bin/mysql: unknown variable 'character-set-server=utf8' The reason is that mysql client no longer supports character-set-server parameter. Actually I don't know why, the official ChangeLog doesn't include any explanations. The solution is to disable character-set-server option inside /etc/mysql/my.cnf [mysql] character-sets-dir=/usr/share/mysql/charsets #character-set-server=utf8