Setting up MySQL to connect to from PLESK for example is very simple
apt-get install mysql-server
Then, you will need to allow mysql to listen to the outside world
Edit /etc/mysql/my.cnf
and comment out the line
bind-address = 127.0.0.1
then, you will need to allow the root user to connect from outside the server
On the command prompt
mysql -uroot –password=”aPassWord”
use mysql;
select host, user from user;
Now look for the root user with the hostname of the machine, assuming it came out as thishost
update user set host=’%’ where user=’root’ and host=’thishost’;
flush privileges;
quit
And you should be all set
If you don’t perform the above operations, PLESK will complain when you add the server to the list of database servers, You will probably see an error like
Error: Test connection to the database server has failed because of network problems:
Failed to connect to database: Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘host.domain.com’ (10061)