Maria DB Access and Account Configuration

In BioStar 2.4.1, the following security measures will be introduced (2017 Q2):

  • External access to Maria DB is blocked by default
  • Only Administrator account for Maria DB is the 'root' account

However this setting is not applied automatically if you are upgrading BioStar 2 from another lower version and if you are using any BioStar 2 version lower than 2.4.1

Maria DB can be accessed via the IP of the hosting PC by default. You may want to limit the access of the database to be only on the hosting PC for security reasons. In that case you can follow the instructions below:

1. Go to the path below in Windows explorer:
C:\Program Files\BioStar 2(x64)\ta\mariadb-10.1.10-winx64

2. Right click and edit my.cnf with a text editor such as Notepad.

3. Copy and paste the text below into the file:
bind-address=127.0.0.1

4. Save the file.

Now you can only access the Maria database at the hosted PC.

If you install BioStar 2 with the express install, a default administrator account will be created for the AC and TA database. Account information is as shown below:

You must know your root password to change the default administrator password of both databases.
The AC DB is Maria DB starting BioStar 2.3. In previous versions it was a SQLite DB.

DB: Biostar2_ac
ID: biostar2_ac_user
PW: biostar2_ac_pw

DB: BioStar_tna
ID: biostartnauser
PW: suprematna123

Follow the instructions below to change the password of the default accounts.
1. Download HeidiSQL.
2. Install and run HeidiSQL.
3. Enter the information below on Settings:

  • Hostname/IP: 127.0.0.1
  • User: root
  • Password: [your root password]
  • Port: 3312


4. Click Open.
5. Click Tools > User Manager.

6. Click on each default users (biostar2_ac_user & biostartnauser) and change the password.

7. Click Save.

There are 2 accounts for each users to have different passwords based on connection type. Below are what the Host type stands for:
  • Localhost : connection via 127.0.0.1 or localhost
  • % : connection via host PC IP