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The recent release of Slackware 14.1 comes with a few improvements. One of which is that it now uses MariaDB in place of MySQL. MariaDB is basically the same database as MySQL just not tied to Oracle in any way (it even still uses mysqld as its daemon name).
However when you start slackware you will still see an error that mysql could not be started.
mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysql/mysql.pid ended
Assuming that you selected to install the MySQL service when you setup slackware you are 99% the way to getting it up and running. Most of the configuration we had to do previously in slackware is unnecessary but there are still a few steps.
Step 1: Install system database
MariaDB still needs us to run the install script to setup its own internal database.
mysql_install_db
Step 2: Setup ownership permissions
Obviously will need to give the mysql user ownership of the required mysql files.
chown -R mysql.mysql /var/lib/mysql
Step 3: Start MariaDB
We can now start MariaDB
/etc/rc.d/rc.mysql start
Step 4: Setup Root user password
As a final step set a root user password.
mysqladmin -u root password '[new-password]'
Reader Comments
@jdelaportev
Monday, June 16, 2014 at 4:04:38 PM Coordinated Universal Time
Thanks for the article! It was helpful to get back to the basics. I was buried in errors trying to set up a MariaDB a few minutes ago. I found an additional hint that helped at digitalocean. I was getting InnoDB errors, and fixed them by adding the following to my.cnf:
# Added these two lines recommended by digitalocean.com
default-storage-engine=myisam
skip_innodb
Also, it worked for me to run the following command to create the database and set up ownership of the data directory simultaneously:
# mysql_install_db --user=mysql
Monday, February 26, 2018 at 10:59:50 PM Coordinated Universal Time
Thank you for the assistance here! Smooth sailing! I am not sure if I had the same Slackware 14.1 as you or not, but on my install, the command was /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld start. Thanks again for the info! First time playing with Slackware. It's growing on me quickly.
Monday, November 26, 2018 at 9:22:42 PM Coordinated Universal Time
Almost perfect, for me step #3 needed to be: /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld start (note the added 'd' was missing). Thanks so much for a clear easy to follow setup. This was on Slackware64 current, from 11/26/18, got tired of waiting for 15 to drop and needed to update everything. Thanks again!