Can't start mysql - mysql respawning too fast, stopped

Question

Today I did a fresh install of ubuntu 12.04 and went about setting up my local development environment. I installed mysql and edited /etc/mysql/my.cnf to optimise InnoDB but when I try to restart mysql, it fails with a error:

[20:53][tom@Pochama:/var/www/website] (master) $ sudo service mysql restart
start: Job failed to start

The syslog reveals there is a problem with the init script:

> tail -f /var/log/syslog

Apr 28 21:17:46 Pochama kernel: [11840.884524] type=1400 audit(1335644266.033:184): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=760 comm="apparmor_parser"
Apr 28 21:17:47 Pochama kernel: [11842.603773] init: mysql main process (764) terminated with status 7
Apr 28 21:17:47 Pochama kernel: [11842.603841] init: mysql main process ended, respawning
Apr 28 21:17:48 Pochama kernel: [11842.932462] init: mysql post-start process (765) terminated with status 1
Apr 28 21:17:48 Pochama kernel: [11842.950393] type=1400 audit(1335644268.101:185): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=811 comm="apparmor_parser"
Apr 28 21:17:49 Pochama kernel: [11844.656598] init: mysql main process (815) terminated with status 7
Apr 28 21:17:49 Pochama kernel: [11844.656665] init: mysql main process ended, respawning
Apr 28 21:17:50 Pochama kernel: [11845.004435] init: mysql post-start process (816) terminated with status 1
Apr 28 21:17:50 Pochama kernel: [11845.021777] type=1400 audit(1335644270.173:186): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=865 comm="apparmor_parser"
Apr 28 21:17:51 Pochama kernel: [11846.721982] init: mysql main process (871) terminated with status 7
Apr 28 21:17:51 Pochama kernel: [11846.722001] init: mysql respawning too fast, stopped

Any ideas?

---

Things I tried already:

I googled and found a Ubuntu bug with apparmor (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/970366), I changed apparmor from enforce mode to complain mode:

sudo apt-get install apparmor-utils
sudo aa-complain /usr/sbin/mysqld
sudo /etc/init.d/apparmor reload

but it didn't help. I still can't start mysql.

I also thought the issue may be because the InnoDB logfiles were a different size than mysql was expecting. I removed the innodb log files before restarting using: sudo mv /var/lib/mysql/ib_logfile* /tmp. No luck though.

Workaround: I re-installed 12.04, made sure not to touch /etc/mysql/my.cnf in any way. Mysql is working so I can get on with what I need to do. But I will need to edit it at some point - Hopefully I'll have figured out a solution, or this question will have been answered by that point...

Solution 1

I finally figured out the issue. Basically, the definition of some parameters has been removed from the previous version of mysql and has been replaced with different names. To fix, in /etc/mysql/my.cnf, replace:

# Tom Added to ensure the server character set is set to utf8
default-character-set = utf8
default-collation     = utf8_general_ci

with:

# Tom Added to ensure the server character set is set to utf8
character_set_server  = utf8
collation_server      = utf8_general_ci

This is the associated launchpad bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.5/+bug/958120.

Or easily run:

# Miraz added dpkg-reconfigure
dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5

But make sure there's no old mysql version installation installed, if there was please remove:

# Miraz quick mysql package check
dpkg -l *mysql*

Solution 2

I had a similar problem. It was frustrating because I couldn't see any error logs indicating what the problem was.

In my case, the value I had set for innodb_buffer_pool_size was too large for the memory of the server.

I found this out by running mysqld directly as the mysql user.

# su mysql
# mysqld

This way you actually see the error output.

Solution 3

Innodb has a default setting (innodb_buffer_pool_size) which is set to 128M - this may be too large for your server (especially if you're using a small Amazon EC2 AMI - which I was) The fix that worked for me was to add the following line to /etc/mysql/my.cnf

innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M

I wrote about this fix over here http://www.mlynn.org/2012/07/mysql-5-5-on-ubuntu-12-04-job-failed-to-start

Solution 4

I also had a similar problem. The items below say they have been removed from mysql server 5.5.
If you have them in your my.cnf, it won't start. Comment them out with #.
(Info derived from : http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/replication-options-slave.html)

The options affected are shown in this list:

 --master-host
 --master-user
 --master-password
 --master-port
 --master-connect-retry
 --master-ssl
 --master-ssl-ca
 --master-ssl-capath
 --master-ssl-cert
 --master-ssl-cipher
 --master-ssl-key

Solution 5

It seems to boil down to errors in the MySQL configuration, located in /etc/mysql/my.cnf and files in /etc/mysql/conf.d/.

In my case it was a wrong bind-address value, because the IP address of my machine had changed and MySQL couldn't bind anymore. Feel free to rea more on this in this blog article.

View more solutions

Comments

[Ringtail]

Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference.

[Jim]

Perfect! Exactly what was throwing me off. Thanks.

[eageranalyst]

This is a great tip, I'd been struggling to get some meaningful debug information out of mysql. Thanks!

[David Purdue]

I did not have this problem, but a dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5 fixed whatever was wrong in my config.

[thaddeusmt]

Turns out my VM was just plain running out of memory. Setting innodb_buffer_pool_size lower was one part of the solution, but beware you might just be out of memory.

[MaasSql]

in my case, the problem turned out to be a mistyped property name in /etc/mysql/my.cnf....From this blog: dangtrinh.com/2014/05/… , run mysqld -v. I tried googling mysql exit code 7, without success. My guess is exit code 7 has to do with failures to parse the mysql configuration file.

[Dave Burt]

I had this same issue but found it difficult to trace because my faulty configuration was under /etc/mysql/conf.d/* and also because there were old logs called /var/log/mysql.* which caused me not to notice the active logs /var/log/mysql/*.

[TheHidden]

this thing in ancient but this was my problem....dunno how it changed...

[sighrobot]

in some cases, by changing file system or mounting the /tmp on new partition.

[Akshay]

side note: utf8_unicode_ci is better. Now even utf8mb4_unicode_ci