Installing MySQL should be a no brainer on any operating system, especially with how mature of a product it is. Apparently that assumption is incorrect. I tried installing the most recent GA release of MySQL on my new Snow Leopard machine, and found I couldn’t start the blasted server. I’ve become lazy the older I get – I don’t want to screw around with shell scripts, hacking this tweaking that. If I’m provided a Mac-based installer I WANT IT TO WORK. So, if you’re like me and are frustrated as all hell with not being able to get MySQL to start via System Preferences after installing the 64-bit version (maybe 32-bit as well), do the following:
- Drop into Terminal.app
- Type: sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server
- Find the line starting with basedir and datadir and replace with:
basedir=/usr/local/mysql
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data - Save the file
- Start MySQL using the System Preferences pane button.
I’m amazed this is the fix and that the MySQL team overlooked the configuration change in their packaging. Very irritating. Enjoy.
Reinhard
Thanks for your hint. It saved time for me!
Mike Langford
Thank you so much for this solution. It worked like a charm. I was going crazy searching every forum mentioning this issue to no avail. I posed your fix over on Apple’s discussion forum too so people there can benefit.
Flackou
Thanks for this trick.
Alastair
Ah ha! I’m glad I wasn’t the only one having this problem! Cheers for the fix.
Vinay
Thanks a lot for letting us know!
Job
Amazing that something this simple fixed the problem, I had used a almost every sudo thing but nothing worked and this took me 2 seconds result!! Thanks!!
mrgreenfur
I spent hours fiddling and eventually reverted to 5.1, but watned to say thanks!
Joe
Well done.. I was looking through the script while googling the problem… awesome. Thanks.
Antonio
Thanks man! I was going crazy and it was that simple!