Error when starting mariadb - no such process

Question

I installed mariadb via homebrew to set up a wordpress enviroment. It is meant to work with laravel valet. I am currently using using the zsh shell.

I installed it without a problem (10.3.12), but when I run mysql.server start I get the following error:

mysql.server start
Starting MariaDB
.190206 11:26:18 mysqld_safe Logging to '/usr/local/var/mysql/chriss-mbp.lan.err'.
190206 11:26:18 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/var/mysql
/usr/local/bin/mysql.server: line 260: kill: (55179) - No such process
 ERROR!

Can anybody help me narrow down why I'm getting this error? I'm new to terminal and mariadb, so I'm hoping it's just a silly error that I wasn't aware of.

Answer 1

Looking at the offending line in the startup script, this error indicates:

1. the startup script timed out waiting for the server to come up, and
2. the server process isn't running.

The command name kill is a little misleading; it's most commonly used to kill a process, but it can also be used to send an arbitrary signal, or even (with -0) just to check whether it would be possible to send a signal, which is what's happening here.

To find out why the server didn't come up, you need to check the error log, which on a macOS / Homebrew installation of MySQL or MariaDB is going to be in:

/usr/local/var/mysql/<hostname>.err

If you tail that file, you should see the reason for the failure, e.g.

2019-11-01 11:29:14 0 [ERROR] Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port.
  Got error: 48: Address already in use
2019-11-01 11:29:14 0 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server
  running on port: 3306 ?
2019-11-01 11:29:14 0 [ERROR] Aborting

(In my case I had another instance of MariaDB running in a Docker container and squatting on port 3306.)

Answer 2

Brew has its own service manager included. Via brew services list you get all installed services listed. MariaDB should be there.

To start it call brew services start mariadb.