Error in starting MySQL in Mac OS X 10.6

Question

i am trying to run MySQL 5.5.8 in my Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I'm calling /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe and I get this in the error log...

110124 16:35:36 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64/data
110124 16:35:36 [Warning] Setting lower_case_table_names=2 because file system for /usr/local/mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64/data/ is case insensitive
110124 16:35:36 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
110124 16:35:36  InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
110124 16:35:36  InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
110124 16:35:36  InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda.
110124 16:35:36  InnoDB: 1.1.4 started; log sequence number 2809411
110124 16:35:36 [ERROR] Can't start server : Bind on unix socket: Permission denied
110124 16:35:36 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on socket: /var/mysql/mysql.sock ?
110124 16:35:36 [ERROR] Aborting

110124 16:35:36  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
110124 16:35:38  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 2809411
110124 16:35:38 [Note] /usr/local/mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64/bin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

110124 16:35:38 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64/data/MyMacPro.local.pid ended

Here is what I have in /etc/my.cnf... wondering if I need to add more settings.

[client]
socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock

[mysqld]
socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Thank you so much, Robert

Answer 1

110124 16:35:36 [ERROR] Can't start server : Bind on unix socket: Permission denied

We did the following just now with MySQL 5.5.28 that fixed the bind problem for us. It is necessary because the sock file is written here:

sudo chown -R _mysql /var/lib/mysql

We also did the following although I'm not sure that it was necessary:

sudo chown -R _mysql /usr/local/mysql