MySQL my.cnf (2.x)

You can configure MySQL to read a wide variety of startup options from a file named my.cnf. Settings are scoped and can be overridden by file location:

Scope	Location	Override
global	`/etc/my.cnf`
server-specific	binary install: `/usr/local/mysql/data/my.cnf`; source install: `/usr/local/var/my.cnf`	global
user	`~/my.cnf`	global, server-specific

Below is a minimalist MySQL 5.1 configuration file for a development laptop /etc/my.cnf:

[mysqld]
default-storage-engine=InnoDB
lower_case_table_names=1

Restart MySQL in order for the new settings to take effect.