I have a ubuntu 16.04 on which I run 3 servers from virtualbox (a webserver, a home file server and a mysql server).
In this mysql server I naturally have an internal ip (192.168....) and an external one.
However when I try to connect remotely to this mysql server from mysql shell, workbench or .NET connector (eg. mysql -u root -p -h 172.241.442.12) using the external IP of this virtual machine I always get ERROR: Not connected.
My question is whether to connect I have to enable port forwarding in my router (3306), just as I would do enabling 80/8080 in a webserver to make it accessible from the internet.
I never did it before and haven't find any clear tutorial either. My main purpose is to connect to this db in a vb.net application.
Thanks!
Yes, if you intend to access it in this manner you will need to forward a port. You will also need to grant access to MySQL for a user that is allowed remote access.
GRANT ALL ON somedb.* TO `user`@`123.123.123.123` IDENTIFIED BY 'somePassword'
The IP address can be a hostname, or % to match everything.
That said, unless you really need a permanant external connection to MySQL you should not expose it like this, the better option would be to tunnel the port through SSH.
ssh -N user@dbserver -L12345:localhost:3306 &
mysql -u root -h localhost -P 12345