2.10.2 Starting the Server

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2.10.2.1 Troubleshooting Problems Starting the MySQL Server

This section describes how start the server on Unix and Unix-like systems. (For Windows, see Section 2.3.7.4, “Starting the Server for the First Time”.) For some suggested commands that you can use to test whether the server is accessible and working properly, see Section 2.10.3, “Testing the Server”.

Start the MySQL server like this:

shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

It is important that the MySQL server be run using an unprivileged (non-root) login account. To ensure this if you run mysqld_safe as root, include the --user option as shown. Otherwise, execute the program while logged in as mysql, in which case you can omit the --user option from the command.

For further instructions for running MySQL as an unprivileged user, see Section 6.1.5, “How to Run MySQL as a Normal User”.

If the command fails immediately and prints mysqld ended, look for information in the error log (which by default is the host_name.err file in the data directory).

If the server is unable to access the data directory it starts or read the grant tables in the mysql database, it writes a message to its error log. Such problems can occur if you neglected to create the grant tables by initializing the data directory before proceeding to this step, or if you ran the command that initializes the data directory without the --user option. Remove the data directory and run the command with the --user option.

If you have other problems starting the server, see Section 2.10.2.1, “Troubleshooting Problems Starting the MySQL Server”. For more information about mysqld_safe, see Section 4.3.2, “mysqld_safe — MySQL Server Startup Script”.

You can set up new accounts using the bin/mysql_setpermission script if you install the DBI and DBD::mysql Perl modules. See Section 4.6.13, “mysql_setpermission — Interactively Set Permissions in Grant Tables”. For Perl module installation instructions, see Section 2.12, “Perl Installation Notes”.

If you would like to use mysqlaccess and have the MySQL distribution in some nonstandard location, you must change the location where mysqlaccess expects to find the mysql client. Edit the bin/mysqlaccess script at approximately line 18. Search for a line that looks like this:

$MYSQL     = '/usr/local/bin/mysql';    # path to mysql executable

Change the path to reflect the location where mysql actually is stored on your system. If you do not do this, a Broken pipe error will occur when you run mysqlaccess.