Look here for informations how you can show the MySQL default character set.

At first you need the Amazon RDS Command Line Toolkit Show archive.org snapshot

• download and unzip the Amazon RDS Command Line Toolkit Show archive.org snapshot

• set the needed environment variables:

  export AWS_RDS_HOME=/home/foobar/Downloads/RDSCli-1.4.007/
  export JAVA_HOME=/usr
  

• create an aws-credential (e.g. aws-credential.txt) file like this:

  AWSAccessKeyId=AWS access ID
  AWSSecretKey=AWS secret key
  

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According to amazon there must be given the following data:

You can either use the AWS Accounts access keys and they can be found at http://aws.amazon.com under Account->Security Credentials or you can use the access keys of a user created with IA

After that you can create a new parameter group

/home/foobar/Downloads/RDSCli-1.4.007/bin/rds-create-db-parameter-group utf8 -f mysql5.1 -d "default parameter with utf8" --aws-credential-file ./aws-credential.txt --region eu-west-1

The output should look like this:

DBPARAMETERGROUP  utf8  mysql5.1  default with utf8

Now change the parameter of the new parameter group

/home/foobar/Downloads/RDSCli-1.4.007/bin/rds-modify-db-parameter-group utf8 --region eu-west-1 --aws-credential-file .aws-credential.txt \
--parameters="name=character_set_server, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=character_set_filesystem, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=character_set_client, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=character_set_connection, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=character_set_database, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=character_set_results, value=utf8, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=collation_server, value=utf8_general_ci, method=immediate" \
--parameters="name=collation_connection, value=utf8_general_ci, method=immediate"

The output should look like this:

DBPARAMETERGROUP  utf8

Change the parameter set of your RDS-Instance

/home/foobar/Downloads/RDSCli-1.4.007/bin/rds-modify-db-instance --aws-credential-file ./aws-credential.txt --region eu-west-1 --db-instance-identifier example-db --db-parameter-group-name utf8

The output should look like this:

DBINSTANCE  example-db  2011-09-15T08:51:52.630Z  db.m1.large  mysql  7  example-db  available  example-db.gosfg54sd8.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com  3306  eu-west-1a  1  y  5.1.57  general-public-license
  SECGROUP  sg-example  active
  PARAMGRP  utf8  applying

After that you have to restart your RDS-Instance to apply the changes

/home/foobar/Downloads/RDSCli-1.4.007/bin/rds-reboot-db-instance --region eu-west-1 --aws-credential-file ./aws-credential.txt --db-instance-identifier example-db

The output should look like this:

DBINSTANCE  example-db  2011-09-15T08:51:52.630Z  db.m1.large  mysql  7  example-db  rebooting  example-db.gosfg54sd8.eu-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com  3306  eu-west-1a  1  y  5.1.57  general-public-license
  SECGROUP  sg-example  active
  PARAMGRP  utf8  pending-reboot

After the reboot is finished check whether the default character set has changed.