Most plugins store data in a file and never ask you for anything. A few — the ones handling permissions, economy, or data shared between servers — want a real database, and setting one up is four fields long.
What to do
- Databases → New Database
You give it a name. The panel generates the username, the password and the host.
- Copy all four values
Host, database name, username, password. The password is shown when you create it — copy it now rather than resetting it later.
- Open the plugin's config
Look for a
mysql:orstorage:section. Setenabled: trueand fill in the four values you copied. - Restart the server
Not
reload. Database connections are established at startup, and a reload leaves the plugin holding a connection to nothing.
The four values and where they go
| Plugin asks for | You paste |
|---|---|
host or address | The host shown in the panel — not localhost |
database | The database name, including its prefix |
username | The generated user, prefix included |
password | The generated password |
localhost is the single most common mistakePlugin configs ship with localhost as the default host, and it is wrong here. Your database does not live inside your game server's container, so localhost points at nothing. Use the host the panel gives you, exactly as written.
A single server with one permissions plugin runs perfectly well on the file storage it ships with. MySQL earns its keep when several servers share data, or when a plugin's own documentation says its file backend does not scale. Otherwise it is one more thing to configure and back up.
The console shows the plugin connecting to the database on startup, with no Communications link failure or access-denied line.