MySQL server startup error 'The server quit without updating PID file'

On Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard), starting MySQL gives the following error:

> The server quit without updating PID file

File my.cnf

[mysqld]
port            = 3306

socket          = /tmp/mysql.sock

skip-external-locking

key_buffer_size = 16K

pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[mysqld_safe]

log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log

pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

Try to find your log file with suffix ".err". There should be more information. It might be in:

/usr/local/var/mysql/your_computer_name.local.err

It's probably a problem with permissions

1. Check if any MySQL instance is running

   ps -ef | grep mysql
   

   If yes, you should stop it, or kill the process:

   kill -9 PID
   

   where PID is the number displayed next to the username on the output of the previous command

2. Check ownership of /usr/local/var/mysql/

   ls -laF /usr/local/var/mysql/
   

   If it is owner by root, you should change it to mysql or your_user

   sudo chown -R mysql /usr/local/var/mysql/
   

Follow the instructions from brew install mysql.

Set up databases to run as your user account with:

For MySQL 5.x:

unset TMPDIR
mysql_install_db --verbose --user=`whoami` --basedir="$(brew --prefix mysql)" --datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --tmpdir=/tmp

To set up base tables in another folder, or use a different user to run mysqld, view the help for mysqld_install_db:

mysql_install_db --help

And view the MySQL documentation:

• 4.4.3 mysql_install_db — Initialize MySQL Data Directory
• 2.10.4 Securing the Initial MySQL Accounts

For MySQL 8.x:

unset TMPDIR
mysqld --initialize-insecure --log-error-verbosity --user=`whoami` --basedir="$(brew --prefix mysql)" --datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --tmpdir=/tmp

Make sure the data directory /usr/local/var/mysql above is empty. Back it up if necessary.

To run as, for instance, user "mysql", you may need to sudo:

sudo mysql_install_db ...options...

Start mysqld manually with:

mysql.server start

Note: if this fails, you probably forgot to run the first two steps up above

I had the same issue on my Mac machine (correctly followed all the installation steps suggested by brew install).

Deleting the error file fixed it for me:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/var/mysql/dev.work.err (dev.work is my hostname)

This worked because dev.work.err was owned by _mysql:wheel instead of my own username. CHOWN-ing the error file would have probably fixed it as well.

After rebooting I had the same issue. Here is how I fixed it:

sudo chown -R _mysql /usr/local/var/mysql

This worked for me...

Check all of the MySQL processes running:

$ ps aux | grep mysql

USER     PID    %CPU  %MEM 
_mysql   5970   0.0   0.4 ...

Then kill all the processes listed from the above command using the following:

$ sudo kill -9 [PID]

Replace [PID] with the individual PID from the list above, e.g. 5970.

Do that for all of the lines you see with the first command.

Then you can startup your MySQL server again:

mysql.server start

Try to remove the ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 files and then run MySQL again:

rm /usr/local/var/mysql/ib_logfile0
rm /usr/local/var/mysql/ib_logfile1

It works for me.

This error can occur when trying to start MySQL after it was improperly shut down.

1. Take a look at the MySQL error log file. If it mentions something like "Check that you do not already have another mysqld process using the same data or log files.", then you need to properly shutdown that process.

2. See what process MySQL is running on. Use the command lsof -i:3306 (the default port number for MySQL is 3306).

   Your output should look like this:

   COMMAND   PID      USER  FD   TYPE  DEVICE             SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
   mysqld   4249  username  17u  IPv4  0x7843d9d130469c0b      0t0 TCP  localhost:mysql (LISTEN)
   

3. Terminate the process running mysql: kill -15 4249

   Kill -15 sends a signal to the process to free up any resources it is locking and terminate the process after.

4. Now MySQL should start up with no problems: mysql.server start

My error file told me also that the port may be being used by another process, but simply running sudo mysql.server start fixed the issue for me.

⚠️ This will erase your data, so make sure it's backed up first.

If no one answer helped you, just remove folder /usr/local/var/mysql and then install MySQL again using brew reinstall mysql.

I recently came across this issue, however it was working before, then stopped.

This was because I initially started mysql.server as root instead of myself.

The fix was to delete the err log file (which was owned by _mysql). Starting it again got it passed.

For me the fix was simple.

top

showed that mysqld was already running.

sudo killall mysqld 

then allowed the process to start.

For me I had to reinstall MySQL:

brew reinstall mysql

And then the below to have launchd start MySQL now and restart at login:

brew services start mysql

The solution that worked for me was here: Can't create PID file on MySQL server, permission denied

Changing some of my permissions seemed to do the trick. I'm running a mid-2012 MacBook Air with Mac OS X v10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) and MySQL was installed with Homebrew.

chmod 0755 /var
chown root:wheel /var/tmp
sudo chmod 0771 /usr/local/var/mysql/*

I'm using

• a brand new MacBook Pro with OS X v10.7.3.x (Lion)
• GCC via the OS X GCC installer

I installed MySQL using Homebrew ('brew install mysql'). It installed a couple of dependencies and then MySQL.

When I tried to start it up,

mysql.server start

Starting MySQL
.. ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/west.local.pid).

I ran this command,

/usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.25/scripts/mysql_install_db

and MySQL works.

Please take note that you need to run mysql_install_db from the top level of the MySQL directory (e.g., usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.5.25). Running it directly within the /scripts directory does not give it enough context for it to run.

I had this problem while trying to brew upgrade on Mac OS X v10.7.5 (Lion).

Unfortunately MySQL was also upgraded to 5.6.10 from 5.5.14. I tried the new version, but it did not work.

I decided to go back to my old setup and did a

brew switch mysql 5.5.14

This did not solve the problem. Elsewhere I read and did this, voila! All was back :)

cd /usr/local/var/mysql
mv ib_logfile0 ib_logfile0.bak
mv ib_logfile1 ib_logfile1.bak

For me the solution was to override/correct the data directory in /etc/my/cnf.

I built MySQL 5.5.27 from source with the directions provided in the readme file:

---

# Preconfiguration setup
shell> groupadd mysql
shell> useradd -r -g mysql mysql
# Beginning of source-build specific instructions
shell> tar zxvf mysql-VERSION.tar.gz
shell> cd mysql-VERSION
shell> cmake .
shell> make
shell> make install
# End of source-build specific instructions

# Postinstallation setup
shell> cd /usr/local/mysql
shell> chown -R mysql .
shell> chgrp -R mysql .
shell> scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
shell> chown -R root .
shell> chown -R mysql data

# Next command is optional
shell> cp support-files/my-medium.cnf /etc/my.cnf
shell> bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

# Next command is optional
shell> cp support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql.server

---

mysqld_safe terminated itself without explanation. running /etc/init.d/mysql.server start resulted in the error:

"The server quit without updating PID file"

I noticed something odd in the installation instructions though. It has ownership changed to mysql for the directory "data", but not to "var"; this is unusual because for years I have had to ensure that var directory was mysql writable. So I manually ran chown -R mysql /usr/local/mysql/var and then attempted to start it again. Still no luck. But worse, no .err file in the var dir - it was in the "data" dir! so scripts/mysql_install_db sets up camp in /usr/local/mysql/var, but the rest of the application seems to want to do its work in /usr/local/mysql/data!

So I just edited /etc/my.cnf and under the section [mysqld] I added a directive to explicitly point mysql's data directory to var (as I normally expect it to be any how), and after doing so, mysqld starts up just fine. The directive to add looks like this:

datadir = /usr/local/mysql/var

Worked for me. Hope it helps for you.

This worked for me:

On a Mac with Homebrew:

List all instances of MySQL that exists by running

brew services

Remove each instance by running

brew uninstall <instance_name>

Delete the MySQL directory in /usr/local/var/mysql:

rm -rf /usr/local/var/mysql

Reinstall MySQL using Homebrew:

brew install mysql
brew install mysql@<version> #Optional

Rerun mysql.server start:

mysql.server start

If your system has multiple version of MySQL then you are likely going to hit this PID error:

We can begin with killing all MySQL processes:

sudo killall mysqld

Go to /usr/local and choose which MySQL version you want to have, and then provide the MySQL permission to that. In my case I needed version 8.

sudo chown -R mysql mysql-8.0.21-macos10.15-x86_64

Go to the folder /usr/local/mysql-8.0.21-macos10.15-x86_64 and start the SQL server:

sudo ./mysql.server start (Enter your laptop password)

If it gives the below output... the PID issue is solved

sudo ./mysql.server start

Starting MySQL
.. SUCCESS!

It seems that the MySQL process is running, hence you are unable to use the port. You can check the running MySQL process using following command:

ps auxf | grep mysql

If you get any MySQL process, kill that process ID using kill -9 PID and then try to start MySQL.

Start MySQL in safe mode:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe start

Or on the Mac, end any mysql or mysqld task (or other) in your Activity Monitor application.

Or check you error by

tail -f /usr/local/mysql/data/XXXXX-XXXXX-Pro.local.err

With the help of a few answers posted here, I was able to find the issue

First I run

sudo -i

So I could have root access.

Then I deleted the xxxx.err file:

rm -rf /usr/local/mysql/data/xxxx.err

After I started MySQL in SafeMode,

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe start

It will try to start and will exit because of an error... a new xxx.err file will be created and you need to read it to see the cause of the error:

tail -f /usr/local/mysql/data/mysqld.local.err

In my case, for some reason, it was missing some folder and file inside /var/log/ folder... So I created both:

cd /var/log

mkdir mysql

touch mysql-bin.index

After the new file was created, then you need to change permissions:

chown -R _mysql /var/log/mysql

When all those steps were taken, my database started working immediately...

The key is to read the error and log and find what's is wrong...

What's the error log saying? I got this error, and it ended up being an old invalid setting in the my.cnf file, which the MySQL error log indicated. If not a bad configuration setting, the error log should at least point you in the right direction.

Somehow I screwed up my permissions on Mac OS X v10.11 (El Capitan) and decided to reinstall MySQL from scratch.

I use Homebrew on El Capitan and decided to reinstall:

brew uninstall mysql
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/var/mysql
brew install mysql
mysql.server start # ... SUCCESS

The file permissions on a fresh install changed from _mysql to include my username:

ls -alh /usr/local/var/mysql
drwxr-xr-x   22 lfender  admin   748B Mar 22 09:58 .
# ... etc.

In my case, the error happens due to the accessing problem of the error log file.

The following two commands help me address the problem.

sudo chown <user> /usr/local/var/mysql/<my-host-name>.err
sudo chmod 666 /usr/local/var/mysql/<my-host-name>.err

I hope this works for you.

After checking the error log, I found this:

120309 17:42:49 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/data
120309 17:42:50 [Warning] Setting lower_case_table_names=2 because file system for /usr/local/mysql/data/ is case insensitive
120309 17:42:50 [Warning] You need to use --log-bin to make --binlog-format work.
120309 17:42:50 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
120309 17:42:50 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
120309 17:42:50 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
120309 17:42:50 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
120309 17:42:50 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 16.0M
120309 17:42:50 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
120309 17:42:50  InnoDB: Operating system error number 13 in a file operation.
InnoDB: The error means mysqld does not have the access rights to
InnoDB: the directory.
InnoDB: File name /usr/local/mysql/data/ib_logfile0
InnoDB: File operation call: 'open'.
InnoDB: Cannot continue operation.
120309 17:42:50 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/mysql/data/lu1s.local.pid ended

And to solve it, I gave ownership rights to the entire mysql folder:

cd /usr/local
sudo chown mysql mysql
sudo chown mysql mysql-5.5.21-osx10.6-x86_64
sudo chown _mysql mysql
sudo chown _mysql mysql-5.5.21-osx10.6-x86_64

Then (you can do it command-line too), I applied the permissions (once I gave that ownership to _mysql and mysql users) to all enclosed folders from within the "get info" menu of the folder at /usr/local/mysql-5.5.21-osx10.6-x86_64 . You don't need to tho that to the alias since it's only an alias.

The name of the folder depends of the installation version of MySQL that you have.

I had the same problem. Moving my /etc/my.cnf file worked for me. I got the information here.

I had the same issue. For me it was doing a brew remove while having a previous install of the mysqld running. It seems Homebrew (brew) does not stop a service before uninstalling.

After checking the .err file I saw the logged error that another copy of MySQL may be running, after terminating the old service. I was then able to restart the new MySQL install.

Check if you have space left in your drive. I got this problem when no space left in my drive.

Simple...

Fix the 2002 MySQL socket error.

Fix the looming 2002 socket error – which is linking where MySQL places the socket and where OS X thinks it should be. MySQL puts it in /tmp and OS X looks for it in /var/mysql. The socket is a type of file that allows MySQL client/server communication.

sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Well done :) This helped me a lot!

I took this guide from the guys on http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/

The problem is a permissions one. It can't start because it can't write to file mac.err because it’s owned by someone else.

Make sure the /usr/local/var/mysql folder is owned by the user that will start MySQL. If I start MySQL as jack it’s all good. However, if you start it as root, it will create a mac.err file (owned by root) file that jack can't write to, so when you try to restart it as jack it will fail.

1. Ensure the folder and files are owned by the user running mysql.server start
2. Make sure there's not already a mac.err or mac.pid file owned by someone else.
3. Start is as the right user.

Move the log file named “ib_logfile” in “/var/lib/mysql” and restart mysql. Sometimes mysql will fail because it faces difficulty updating the log file

mv /var/lib/mysql/ib_logfile* /some/tmp/folder/

You can also remove ib_logfile as it will be created automatically after mysql restart

now restart mysql server

Try this...

1. Navigate to the problem's parent directory cd YOURPATH/usr/local/mysql
2. rm -rf *.local.err (deletes file)
3. touch YOURUSERNAME.local.pid (generates new *.local.pid file the error thrown was complaining about)
4. 'cd' back into your project and restart MySQL using mysql.server start

In my case, I got this issue on a VPS and with cPanel.

I tried most of the previous answers, but without success.

1. check where your error log is. It would be mentioned at the end of the error line.

   > ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/var/lib/mysql/111318.vps-11.com.pid).

2. Open that file (/var/lib/mysql/111318.vps-11.com.err) and check the bottom for the latest lines. In my case, there is

   > [ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table './mysql/db' is marked as crashed and should be repaired

3. How solve this: Recovering and fixing the table indexes by command:

   > [~]# myisamchk -r /var/lib/mysql/mysql/db.MYI

   MySQL is not running

4. (Re)Start your MySQL server

I was trying to reinstall MySQL, and I actually forgot to stop the server from my old install. To solve that, ps -ax | grep mysql and kill [whatever PIDs]. But, then again, it's different for everybody. Like the other answers said, go to /usr/local/var/mysql/ and check your .err log file.

In my case, when I tried to start MySQL, I received the same error: The server quit without updating PID file. This is what I did to fix it (using Terminal):

goto /usr/local/var/mysql
sudo rm -rf hostname.err # Delete .err file
cd /usr/local/mysql/support-files
sudo mysql.server start # Success!

Remove the pid file, then start up mysqld again.

Delete *.err files that you find in the directory displayed in the error, create the file MySQL is complaining about, and restart MySQL.

I encountered this problem after a reboot and removing all *err files.

It appeared for me that the my.cnf.d directory was missing in folder /usr/local/etc.

It created it:

mkdir /usr/local/etc/my.cnf.d

And I just copy-pasted files my.cnf and my.cnf.default located in /usr/local/etc into that directory.

Then MySQL was able to restart:

cd /usr/local/var/mysql
mysql.server start

And MySQL works.

This problem usually arrives when you do not have the libaio.1 library installed. Install that package first and redo the mysql_install_db step.

Download and then install the library using the following commands on the terminal from the folder where you extracted it.

make prefix=$HOME install
cd /usr/local/lib
ln -sv $HOME/libaio.so.1 libaio.so.1

It could be related to an old MySQL process. You need to kill it and restart. Sometimes it can be due to a conflict in a MySQL configuration file. Try to move it and restart MySQL.

Check the following URL for more details.

http://linuxadministrator.pro/blog/?p=225

Disable SELinux in /etc/selinux/config:

SELINUX=disabled and restart the server.

I encountered this issue after swapping server IP addresses. The database was working fine before that. There was an entry in file /etc/my.cnf that I needed to update:

bind-address = xxx.xxx.xxx.xx

It had the old IP address in there.

I had the same problem. The reason is quite simple. I installed two MySQL servers. One from MacPorts, and the other from a downloaded package. So I just followed the instruction here and uninstalled the one from the package.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1436425/how-do-you-uninstall-mysql-from-mac-os-x

After that, MySQL was working well.

It’s a problem in the 5.5 version:

Here's an example for the [mysqld] section of your my.cnf file:

skip-character-set-client-handshake
collation_server=utf8_unicode_ci
character_set_server=utf8

Reference: 10.3.2 Server Character Set and Collation

I tried remove all the *.err files, but I am still getting the same error. I got one of the errors in error log:

> [ERROR] InnoDB: Attempted to open a previously opened tablespace. Previous tablespace erp/brand uses space ID : 7 at filepath: ./erp/brand.ibd. Cannot open tablespace webdb1/system_user which uses space ID: 7 at filepath: ./webdb1/system_ user.ibd

So I deleted all the ib* files and it worked:

rm -f *.err ib*

On Mac OS X v10.9 (Mavericks), this script helped me:

bash <(curl -Ls http://git.io/eUx7rg)

And then I reset my password according with https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21944936/error-1045-28000-access-denied-for-user-rootlocalhost-using-password-y/25883967#25883967.

In my case, the problem was, that the MySQL data directory was moved by accident to the wrong directory (/var/log, and not to /var/lib).

After moving the data back to /var/lib/mysql and restarting server, all everything went back to normal again.

In my Homebrew MySQL installation, I simply had to move the ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 located in /usr/local/var/mysql/ to a different directory.

Then I just did mysql.server start and everything worked.

I fixed this issue by running

sudo chown -R myUserName /usr/local/var/mysql

Here myUserName is my current login username.

I have to examine my error file in safe mode to find the root cause:

1. rm -f /usr/local/var/mysql/*.err
2. mysqld_safe start
3. cat mysql/*.err

That revealed an error in the upgrade routine. I tried to fix it, but I couldn't find enough information online. After that I gave up and manually exported the databases:

1. mysql.server start --upgrade=MINIMAL, so the server will start
2. mysqldump won't work because it will try to run the full upgrade, but you can use Sequel Pro, phpMyAdmin, etc. to export.
3. Stop the server, rename the mysql folder to mysql.broken, and do a clean install to get a fresh mysql folder.
4. Start MySQL, and manually import the .sql files you exported earlier.

My answer is unprofessional and I do not understand it. I used CentOS and the generic version of MySQL... when I started the mysql with root user my problem solved using --user=root:

/path/to/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start --user=root

---

If you are using systemctl start mysql.service, you need to change the mysql.service file in /etc/systemd/system/mysql.service:

.
.
.
ExecStart=/path/tp/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start --user=root
ExecStop=/path/to/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop --user=root
.
.
.

try with sudo rm -rf /usr/local/var/mysql/HOSTNAME.err (HOSTNAME is my hostname)

If you are running a MySQL Galera cluster, such as Percona XtraDB Cluster, check for wsrep_recovery.* files in the data directory (eg: /var/lib/mysql).

I was getting the same message from systemctl when trying to start a node which had been killed by the host's OOM killer, but there wasn't any indication of why the startup failed in any of the normal logs. The wsrep recovery files had the answer, and in my case I needed to start MySQL with the following flag:

mysqld --tc-heuristic-recover=ROLLBACK

open /usr/local/var/mysql

You just remove the folder in Finder, and

brew install mysql

install again.

I've solved from this solution.

But this solution will delete your database.