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I am using Ubuntu 13.10 and MySQL 5.6 and I know database name and table name are case sensitive in Ubuntu (and some other *nix environments) by default.

Now, I want to make MySQL work as case insensitive in Ubuntu.

Is it possible? If yes, how can I do it?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Open terminal and edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf 

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Underneath the [mysqld] section.add: 

lower_case_table_names = 1

Restart mysql 

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Then check it here: 

mysqladmin -u root -p variables
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  • 4
    You have to add this section if it is not available. Otherwise the restart will fail.
    – alexander
    Commented Mar 26, 2017 at 18:44
  • 5
    Unfortunately, this does not work with MySQL 8.0 anymore. It has to be set before initialization.
    – stackprotector
    Commented Jul 23, 2020 at 14:25
  • I have installed the mysql as a contener with podman. As it turned out it has Oracle Linux Server 8.8 and mysql 8.1.0. I needed to install vim (microdnf install -y vim) if I wanted a more powerful editor than cat and sed. But other answers suggest that it will be a pain.
    – Arpad Horvath
    Commented Nov 10, 2023 at 10:55
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If you change lower_case_table_names in a DB with existing tables Stack Overflow: MySQL > Table doesn't exist. But it does (or it should) can happen.

The comment to this answer helped me in this case:

I reverted the value, restarted the database, exported the tables, set the value back to 1, restarted the database, re-imported the tables and everything worked again.

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    Happened to me and I wasn't aware that I have a max heart rate of 197 bpm ;-)
    – Sal
    Commented Dec 8, 2020 at 18:13
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This problem was causing pain for me, where Doctrine generated capital/CamelCase table names and MySQL stored them as lowercase!

It was solved by changing my.cnf and adding

lower_case_table_names = 1

under the [mysqld] section

my.cnf can be found:

  • under LAMPP/XAMPP... :

    /opt/lampp/etc/my.cnf

  • stand alone mysql server :

    /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Afterwards restart MySQL server, and everything will be ok.

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