Set CENTOS 6 mysql character sets to UTF8 - mysql

Question

I have a website, and I realised when you copy some characters(*,' " - _) from specific applications like Microsoft word, into a search box on my website, it returns this error:
ERROR org.hibernate.util.JDBCExceptionReporter - Illegal mix of collations (latin1_swedish_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,COERCIBLE) for operation 'like'
So I went to check out my database and I wanted to see if the database used UTF-8.
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%character%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | utf8 |
| character_set_connection | utf8 |
| character_set_database | latin1 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | utf8 |
| character_set_server | latin1 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE '%collation%';
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci |
| collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
+----------------------+-------------------+
As you can see, the database is using latin1 and I wanted to set it to use utf8. So firstly, I'm on a Centos 6.2 server and the file my.cnf file resides in /etc/my.cnf and the file is as follows under the [mysqld]:
[mysqld]
local-infile=0
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks
symbolic-links=0
init_connect ='SET NAMES utf8'
character_set_server = utf8
collation_server = utf8_general_ci
P.S I am not worried about the [client] section since it shows that it uses utf8 under the value of character_set_client.
The issue:
Although I've tried to set the server in my my.cnf file (and closed the file, shutdown my tomcat and restarted my tomcat). Nothing is changing. And when I run the first query I displayed, it still shows that character_set_server is still using latin1

Answer 1

Although restarting my TOMCAT didn't have any effect, I actually had to restart my 'mySql' in order for the changes to take place. So you'd have to stop the main server first (in my case Stop TOMCAT) and then restart mySql and then Start TOMCAT again. After, in your mySql if you type: show VARIABLES like %character%; you should see your database datatype with utf-8 and if you type: show VARIABLES like %collation% you should also see your database collation data type which should be utf-8_general_ci.