Unable to use cyrillic characters in mysql docker console

I'm running a MySQL docker container (latest - 8.0) with the custom configuration file containing:

======================================
[client]

default-character-set=utf8mb4

[mysqld]
collation_server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'
character_set_server = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set=utf8mb4
======================================

Executing inside MySQL console:

show variables like "%coll%";

produces this:

+-------------------------------+--------------------+
| Variable_name                 | Value              |
+-------------------------------+--------------------+
| collation_connection          | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
| collation_database            | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| collation_server              | utf8mb4_unicode_ci |
| default_collation_for_utf8mb4 | utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci |
+-------------------------------+--------------------+

Executing inside MySQL console:

show variables like "%char%";

produces this:

+--------------------------+--------------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                          |
+--------------------------+--------------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8mb4                        |
| character_set_connection | utf8mb4                        |
| character_set_database   | utf8mb4                        |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                         |
| character_set_results    | utf8mb4                        |
| character_set_server     | utf8mb4                        |
| character_set_system     | utf8                           |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql-8.0/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+--------------------------------+

BUT when I go the MySQL console with:

docker exec -it mysql1 mysql -uroot -p*********

I can't use cyrillic (russian) characters. When I switch to Russian locale and try to type anything, the console just ignores keypresses, nothing

As it turns out this was indeed a Docker problem rather than MySQL.

Vanilla MySQL image is built on Debian 9 and by default it lacks UTF-8 support. So I had to follow these steps:

• Login into Docker container with docker exec -it mysql1 bash and run apt-get update

• Then run apt-get install vim apt-get install locales

• Run dpkg-reconfigure locales and select 376 for ru_RU.UTF-8

• Open ~/.bashrc and add

export LANG=ru_RU.utf8

export LANGUAGE=ru_RU.utf8

export LC_ALL=ru_RU.utf8

• Exit the shell and restart the container

Now I can use Russian characters inside the MySQL docker console.

PS: I guess a cleaner and more "Dockeresque" solution would be to run these commands from a Dockerfile. If anybody could provide an answer with a dockerfile example, I'd be happy to accept it.

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#225942, answer score: 7