MySQL in installed but mysqld nowhere to be found!!!!

[Michael Kearey]

On Sat, 2005-04-09 at 17:37 -0400, Evan Panagiotopoulos wrote:
> This is VERY confusing!!!!! I bought and installed the Red Hat
> enterprise version thinking that I will be  getting a "better"
> product. During the installation I selected ALL packages under mysql
> and almost all packages from the rest of the optional ones. The rpm
> product of RedHat _should_ find all dependencies. Well, I issue the
> command "mysql" and I receive "ERROR 2002: Can't connect to local
> MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
> "
> 
> ps -A does not show a mysqld.
> 
> mysqld in not under init.d
> 
> mysqld does not appear anywhere on my computer.
> 
> ps -aux | grep mysqld returns nothing
> 
> Where is the mysql process? 
> 
> Then, I call RedHat, since I have some sort of support, and after I
> punched 1, then 3, then 2, then 22 on the phone, I got a stupid
> message stating that their offices are closed on Saturdays! And I
> thought Microsoft was evil.
> 
> At any rate, now that I have a load of software installed I will
> probably have to re-install and this time I will select to install
> all packages. 
> 

Hi there Evan. I shall drop a few URLS for you to browse through so that
you may get oriented with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

First of all the support information page:

https://www.redhat.com/apps/support/

To find out exactly what is supported, follow the Service Level
Agreements links on that page:

https://www.redhat.com/support/service/sla/

To see the support hours of operation:

https://www.redhat.com/support/service/global/

To see the Knowledge Base:

https://www.redhat.com/apps/support/knowledgebase/


Note that your problem with mysqld is mentioned in the Knowledge Base.
After doing a search in the Knowledge Base for 'mysqld' the first hit is
this:

http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_39_3462.shtm


The reason your 'Everything' install did not include mysql-server is
because it is not on the installation media. Binary Disks 1,2,3 and 4
are the installation media. There is a fifth disk, the Extras CD that
contains mysql-server. 

The Extra's channel, accessible via https://rhn.redhat.com can also be
used to download mysql-server manually using a browser.Otherwise, if you
have registered the system with RHN (Red Hat Network) you can use
up2date as is shown in the Knowledge Base article above.

You said :

> The rpm product of RedHat _should_ find all dependencies. Well, I
issue the
> command "mysql" and I receive "ERROR 2002: Can't connect to local
> MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

It is important to understand something about RPM. It provides a
mechanism to check and enforce dependencies. But it will not _resolve_
the dependencies without some additional configuration or a helper
program like up2date.

Another important point to understand is that the mysql program is a
_client_ application that can contact any mysql server on a network - it
just so happens that if you don't specify a host to connect to, it
defaults to 'localhost'. Since there was no mysql server running on
localhost you get the socket error.

The mysql package should not depend on the mysql-server package. If the
mysql-server package was required by the mysql (client) package, those
that just needed the client would be forced to install the server too.

I hope I managed to help ease the confusion. Please call us during
support hours, and we will be very happy to help.

Cheers,
Michael