Drush mySQL - different my.cnf file

I have a setup of Drupal running inside a bitnami stack.

The server I have has a mySQL db set up so if I'm using command lines, I need to add the path to the other my.cnf file... in this case the original is in /etc

the bitnami one is /opt/bitnamistack/mysql/

I am getting an error with the command line of drush with the SQLSTATE... access denied... so I can run some commands but not others... how/where do I configure drush to look for the new my.cnf file?

I set up a symlink to the old my.cnf but it doesn't seem to work...