Bdtyktl

A software upgrade broke, among other things, mysql and I have not been able to get it back up yet.

Suspected cause: I had a near-full boot disk; the upgrade filled up the disk before completing and thus left everything in a mess. I have given the system more disk and moved /var to its own partition. I am still unsuccessfully trying to revive mysql.

Below is what I attempted so far (all as root).
First, mysql does not start (443). Attempts to fix (444, 445) fail. Attempts to remove mysql and (?) apparmor fail (446, 7, 8). A more energetic attempt to remove mysql seems to succeed (449) and the previous errors are no longer seen (450, 1, 2). Mysql can't be reconfigured because it's no longer there (453) but attempting to reinstall it gives back the old error messages and we're back to square one (454).

I also checked this question (even though in my case it did not break because of an upgrade to 12.04: it was already working on 12.10)
Fixing broken myslq-server package after upgrade to 12.04
and tried the suggestions in there (458, 461, 462) to no avail.

What else should I do?

This is on 3.5.0-25-generic #39-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 25 18:26:58 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

    443  service mysql start

         start: Job failed to start



    444  dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5

         /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: mysql-server-5.5

         is broken or not fully installed



    445  apt-get -f install

         ...

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of

         mysql-server:

         mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.5; however:

         Package mysql-server-5.5 is not configured yet.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure):

         dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

         No apport report written because the error message

         indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

           mysql-server

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)



    446  apt-get remove mysql-server

         ...

         Removing mysql-server ...

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)





    447  apt-get remove apparmor

         ...

         Package 'apparmor' is not installed, so not removed

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

         1 not fully installed or removed.

         After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. 

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)





    448  apt-get remove mysql-server

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree       

         Reading state information... Done

         Package 'mysql-server' is not installed, so not removed

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

         1 not fully installed or removed.

         After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)



    449  dpkg -r mysql-server-5.5

         (Reading database ... 322156 files and directories

         currently installed.)

         Removing mysql-server-5.5 ...

         Processing triggers for man-db ...

         Processing triggers for ureadahead ...



    450  apt-get remove mysql-server

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree        

         Reading state information... Done

         Package 'mysql-server' is not installed, so not removed

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.



    451  apt-get remove apparmor

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree       

         Reading state information... Done

         Package 'apparmor' is not installed, so not removed

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.



    452  apt-get -f install

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree       

         Reading state information... Done

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.



    453  dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.5

         /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: mysql-server-5.5 is broken

         or not fully installed



    454  apt-get install mysql-server

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree       

         Reading state information... Done

         The following extra packages will be installed:

           mysql-server-5.5

         Suggested packages:

           tinyca mailx

         The following NEW packages will be installed:

           mysql-server mysql-server-5.5

         0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

         Need to get 0 B/8,851 kB of archives.

         After this operation, 32.8 MB of additional disk space

         will be used.

         Do you want to continue [Y/n]? 

         Preconfiguring packages ...

         Selecting previously unselected package mysql-server-5.5.

         (Reading database ... 322081 files and directories

         currently installed.)

         Unpacking mysql-server-5.5 (from 

         .../mysql-server-5.5_5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1_amd64.deb) ...

         Selecting previously unselected package mysql-server.

         Unpacking mysql-server (from 

         .../mysql-server_5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1_all.deb) ...

         Processing triggers for ureadahead ...

         Processing triggers for man-db ...

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server:

           mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.5; however:

         Package mysql-server-5.5 is not configured yet.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure):

         dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

         No apport report written because the error message

         indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

           mysql-server

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)





    458  apt-get remove --purge mysql-server

         Reading package lists... Done

         Building dependency tree       

         Reading state information... Done

         The following packages will be REMOVED:

           mysql-server*

         0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

         2 not fully installed or removed.

         After this operation, 116 kB disk space will be freed.

         Do you want to continue [Y/n]? 

         (Reading database ... 322159 files and directories

         currently installed.)

         Removing mysql-server ...

         Setting up mysql-server-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.10.1) ...

         start: Job failed to start

         invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.

         dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):

         subprocess installed post-installation script

         returned error exit status 1

         Errors were encountered while processing:

           mysql-server-5.5

         E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)



    461  touch /etc/apparmor.d/local/usr.sbin.mysqld

         (no output)



    462  service mysql start

         start: Job failed to start

First, remove MySQL:

sudo apt purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common

sudo apt autoremove

sudo mv -iv /var/lib/mysql /var/tmp/mysql-backup

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql*

Then reinstall:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install mysql-server

sudo mysql_install_db

sudo /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

In Ubuntu 16.04 the way to fix it in my case was (please backup DBs first, databases will be lost):

sudo apt remove --purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common

sudo apt autoremove

sudo mv -iv /var/lib/mysql /var/tmp/mysql-backup

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/mysql*

sudo apt install mysql-server

(Somehow, my previous calls to apt purge mysql-server didn't seem to succeed. I thought that apt purge foo was equivalent to apt remove --purge foo...)

I was getting the exact same errors and tried most of the steps you did, with the same results. The following finally worked for me.

apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common mysql-client-5.5 mysql-server-5.5

After that, mysql installed normally.

I am not sure what was the case for me, but the other solutions did not work, it kept giving an error. I tried this apt-get purge mysql-*, then autoremove and autoclean. After that installation was fine.

**

Be sure to backups your databases, the above command might delete them as well

**

If you just run

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

it will update mysql and this fixed the problem that i had after updating to 16.04 lts.

Or just run

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

to update all of the server packages.