Problems installing MySQL with Homebrew on Mavericks

Question

I'm having insane problems installing MySQL with Homebrew on Mavericks. I know there is a similarly named topic, but I have tried everything written there along with at least 20 sites with no success trying to make it work. I tried installing with steps according to different tutorials but nothing works as it should.

I go like this:

brew update
brew doctor
brew upgrade

brew install mysql

Brew installs it in /usr/local/Cellar/mysql/5.6.16 ...

I try connecting as Brew says: mysql -uroot

I make the LaunchAgents directory, link the homebrew plist file to it and launch controls:

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mysql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

after that I try and start the mysql server with sudo mysql.server start but I get a socket error

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

I try starting the server with mysqld_safe & but I get the following output:

[1] 69187
Davids-MacBook-Air-5:~ davidsupan$ 140224 14:39:16 mysqld_safe Logging to     '/usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err'.
touch: /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err: Permission denied
140224 14:39:16 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/var/mysql
/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe: line 129: /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err: Permission denied
/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe: line 166: /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err: Permission denied
140224 14:39:16 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.pid ended
/usr/local/bin/mysqld_safe: line 129: /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err: Permission denied

The following commands seem to do the trick sudo chmod -R 755 /usr/local/var/mysql rm -Rf /usr/local/var/mysql/Davids-MacBook-Air-5.local.err

mysql.server restart

and the mysql server succesfully starts

Shutting down MySQL
.. SUCCESS! 
Starting MySQL
. SUCCESS! 

Other times, no matter what I do, I keep getting the following error

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

Some pages suggest doing

unset TMPDIR
mysql_install_db --verbose --user='whoami' \\
--basedir="$(brew --prefix mysql)" \\
--datadir=/usr/local/var/mysql --tmpdir=/tmp

but I have no success mending this problem.

Any help would be appreciated. I hope I described the problem detailed enough. If not, I would be glad to provide more information.

EDIT: I try mysqld restart and I get even more errors:

2014-02-25 12:35:54 0 [Warning] TIMESTAMP with implicit DEFAULT value is deprecated. Please use --explicit_defaults_for_timestamp server option (see documentation for more details).
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Warning] Setting lower_case_table_names=2 because file system for /usr/local/var/mysql/ is case insensitive
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Using atomics to ref count buffer pool pages
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Using CPU crc32 instructions
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [ERROR] InnoDB: ./ibdata1 can't be opened in read-write mode
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [ERROR] InnoDB: The system tablespace must be writable!
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' init function returned error.
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [ERROR] Plugin 'InnoDB' registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
mysqld: Too many arguments (first extra is 'restart').
Use --verbose --help to get a list of available options
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [ERROR] Aborting

2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Binlog end
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'partition'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_DATAFILES'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_TABLESPACES'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_FOREIGN_COLS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_FOREIGN'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_FIELDS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_COLUMNS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_INDEXES'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_TABLESTATS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_SYS_TABLES'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_INDEX_TABLE'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_INDEX_CACHE'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_CONFIG'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_BEING_DELETED'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_DELETED'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_FT_DEFAULT_STOPWORD'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_METRICS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_BUFFER_POOL_STATS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_BUFFER_PAGE_LRU'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_BUFFER_PAGE'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMP_PER_INDEX_RESET'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMP_PER_INDEX'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMPMEM_RESET'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMPMEM'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMP_RESET'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_CMP'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_LOCK_WAITS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_LOCKS'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'INNODB_TRX'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'BLACKHOLE'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'ARCHIVE'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MRG_MYISAM'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MyISAM'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'MEMORY'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'CSV'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'sha256_password'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'mysql_old_password'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'mysql_native_password'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] Shutting down plugin 'binlog'
2014-02-25 12:35:54 34599 [Note] mysqld: Shutdown complete

Answer 1

We met the same problem yesterday. My mistake was executing

sudo launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

at the first time, but forgot to unload it. Several clues:

1. a process mysqld_safe runs under root
2. a process mysql runs under _mysql
3. they both up and down again and again.
4. the owner of error file /usr/local/var/mysql/*.err is _mysql
5. when run sudo launchctl list | grep mysql, a mysql service exists

The solution is simple:

sudo launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

The root reason is that, homebrew's mysql is not assumed to be run under root, at least it seems.

Maybe it is not the same problem as yours, but I wish it would help.