Up until this point, I have always connected to my MySQL servers from the local machine. Typically, I was running some sort of Web-App server like Apache/Tomcat on the same machine as the database server and the only access allowed to the database was via the webserver.

Now I am writing an application that requires remote access to the database and I can't for the life of me seem to get it working. I running the server on a Linux server with the firewall configured to the highest level of security, permitting access only on port 22 (SSH) and port 3306 (MySQL). The SSH port works just fine and I can connect to it from the local machine and from remote machines, however the MySQL port doesn't seem to be working quite as well.

If I run the command "telnet localmachine 3306", it works and I see the opening protocol stuff and then after 5 seconds get disconnected for failing to carry out my end of the MySQL authentication protocol. However if instead, I run "telnet 192.168.1.126 3306", I get disconnected immediately after making contact with the machine and I don't see any of the initial protocol stuff. This also happens if I try to connect to it from a different machine using the same command.

This is what I see when I try to connect to the port via telnet:

Trying 192.168.1.126... Connected to 192.168.1.126. Escape character is '^]'. Connection closed by foreign host.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I am getting quite tired of going in circles here.