Why I get this error 'Communications link failure The last packet sent...' when connecting to MySQL with Java (Netbeans)?

Question

I am trying to use MySQL database (that is installed on virtual machine (Debian) on my pc and has IP address 192.168.1.5 ) from Java with use of NetBeans.

I have configured the connection as follows :

Driver Name MySQL(Connector/J Driver)

Host 192.168.1.5

Database test

Username root

Password *

JDBC URL jdbc:mysql://192.168.1.5:3306/test

and then I get the following error :

cannot establish a connection to jdbc:mysql://192.168.1.5:3306/test using 
  com.mysql.jdbc.Driver (Communications link failure  The last packet sent successfully 
  to the server was 0 milliseconds ago. The driver has not received any packets 
  from the server.)

My mysql.user table looks like this ( I know % root is not very secure but this is just to simplify things for the moment):

+------------+------------------+
| host       | user             |
+------------+------------------+
| %          | root             |
| 127.0.0.1  | root             |
| ::1        | root             |
| debVirtual |                  |
| localhost  |                  |
| localhost  | debian-sys-maint |
| localhost  | phpmyadmin       |
| localhost  | root             |
+------------+------------------+

What can I do to allow this connection ?

Solution

The problem was with mysql configuration file on the server /etc/mysql/my.cnf

the line : bind-address should point to your server's IP like in this example

bind-address = 192.168.1.5

and not

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

to allow remote access.