How do I change the permissions that MySQL uses to create database directories and files?

I have a self-installed MySQL service running on my OS X Snow Leopard machine, compiled using the automated installer from mysql.com.

The problem I'm having is that I want to sync my database files, from the "data" directory, using Dropbox. All directories and files created within that folder are being assigned to the user "_mysql" and group "wheel", with the permission of 700. This permission is leaving the files effectively locked, with a red "no entry" icon overlay, and not allowing Dropbox, or me, access to them.

As a temporary measure I can manually change the file permissions to 755 to give me the required access. However, any new database files created by MySQL will still be given the default permission value of 700. Not ideal.

What I need to do is either change the 开发者_运维知识库user/group that MySQL uses to creates these files or change the default permissions value to something that will allow other users/groups to at least read the database files.

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After some research I found that you can change the user MySQL runs as with a simple, yet relatively unknown, option in the configuration file.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/changing-mysql-user.html