can mysql work without my.cnf -file?

[Olli Vaananen]

I'm going to use cyrillic characters, and I was told to put default-character-set=koi8_ru in my.cnf file (Linux).

Funny thing, but there is no such file on my Linux. I did find a file called "my-medium.cnf" (as well as "my-small.cnf","my-large.cnf","my-huge.cnf"), in which it was told

You can copy this file to
# /etc/my.cnf to set global options,
# mysql-data-dir/my.cnf to set server-specific options (in this
# installation this directory is /server/mysql/var) or
# ~/.my.cnf to set user-specific options.

So I suppose mysql can work without. This obviously was something I overlooked when installing Mysql.
Now I have been able to insert cyrillic characters by giving a commands
/etc/rc.d/bin/mysqld down
/etc/rc.d/bin/mysqld up --default-character-set=koi8_ru

But if I wanted to have this variable set everytime mysql starts then I suppose I should have "my.cnf" -file? But should it be in the directory for global options or for server-specific options?

And since in "my-medium.cnf" -file there is no mention about "default-character-set" , where and how should I write it.

Moreover, I don't want my Mysql to handle only cyrillic, but for the most part it'll still be mostly latin1. Will setting the default to koi8_ru somehow affect that?