Reinstall of mysql server hangs

Question

I am trying to reinstall mysql-server-5.5 because mysql server would not start. I purged everything but the install fails I am trying to reinstall using sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.5 and it comes to this point and does not do anything.

Can someone help. This is on Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.5 --reinstall
[sudo] password for shrikant: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1,744 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 303520 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../mysql-server-5.5_5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_amd64.deb ...
mysql stop/waiting
Unpacking mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) over (5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) ...
Replaced by files in installed package mysql-common (5.6.23-1ubuntu14.04) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-16) ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.41-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) ...

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Although I remember doing all of these steps I must have missed some here and there.

This resolved my issue

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25244606/completely-remove-mysql-ubuntu-14-04-lts

Solution 1

In my case, I was simply trying to install updates and it hung the same way:

Setting up mysql-server-5.6 (5.6.28-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) ...

The suggestion above didn't work and suggests at why the upgrade process had failed:

$ sudo service mysql stop
stop: Unknown instance: 

It didn't appear to have the correct PID to stop MySQL, so I stopped it through the other method:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
 * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld                                                 [ OK ]

and the installer continued normally and completed.

Solution 2

I thought I would add this answer just in case someone else is googling for this problem like I was. My situation wasn't exactly the same in that I was simply upgrading the entire system (sudo apt-get upgrade) but it was getting stuck on the same line:

Setting up mysql-server (5.5.46-0ubuntu0.14.04.2) ...

All I did was open another ssh session and then ran

sudo service mysql stop

And then the upgrade continued as normal. This is probably easier than completely removing mysql.

Solution 3

For me was an out of memory issue. I am running it in a Virtual Box and only when I went for increasing the machine's memory that passed the hung up part.

Try this:

dmesg | tail -20 

and search for memory problem at mysqld initialization.

Comments

[Dustin McKenna-Watts]

What do you mean you purged everything? What command did you use? Make sure you use sudo apt-get --purge remove mysql* Then reboot the majcine for extra measure, then reinstall. Lemme know how it works out.

[Dowlers]

Thanks for this. In my case mt OS upgrade from trusty to xenial kept hanging when configuring mysql. Opening a terminal and stopping the service allowed it to continue.

[sarlacii]

As an addition, running "sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop" resulted in a " * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld ...done." message. But, same dpkg config screen persisted, until I ran "sudo service mysql stop" which then logged "mysql stop/waiting" to console, and the dpkg screen exited. So there may be two processes running, and you need to kill them all.