MySQL 5.5 service won’t start: Job failed to start

Trying to connect to a local MySQL 5.5 on an Ubuntu Server 12.10 x64 gave me the following error:

levente@linuxvm:/$ mysql
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

It turned out that the MySQL Service was not running.

levente@linuxvm:/$ ps -ef | grep mysql
levente 5347 2842 0 08:47 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto mysql

Trying to start it failed:

levente@linuxvm:/var/log$ sudo service mysql start
start: Job failed to start

Syslog looked like this:

levente@linuxvm:/$ cat /var/log/syslog
Nov 16 08:28:49 linuxvm kernel: [ 1307.007001] type=1400 audit(1353072529.161:42): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile\_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=4600 comm="apparmor\_parser"
Nov 16 08:28:50 linuxvm kernel: [ 1308.658583] init: mysql main process (4604) terminated with status 1
Nov 16 08:28:50 linuxvm kernel: [ 1308.658625] init: mysql main process ended, respawning
Nov 16 08:28:51 linuxvm kernel: [ 1309.291148] init: mysql post-start process (4605) terminated with status 1
Nov 16 08:28:51 linuxvm kernel: [ 1309.306516] type=1400 audit(1353072531.461:43): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile\_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=4651 comm="apparmor\_parser"
Nov 16 08:28:52 linuxvm kernel: [ 1310.791380] init: mysql main process (4655) terminated with status 1
Nov 16 08:28:52 linuxvm kernel: [ 1310.791400] init: mysql main process ended, respawning
Nov 16 08:28:53 linuxvm kernel: [ 1311.380212] init: mysql post-start process (4656) terminated with status 1
Nov 16 08:28:53 linuxvm kernel: [ 1311.395653] type=1400 audit(1353072533.549:44): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile\_replace" name="/usr/sbin/mysqld" pid=4702 comm="apparmor\_parser"
Nov 16 08:28:55 linuxvm kernel: [ 1312.886555] init: mysql main process (4706) terminated with status 1
Nov 16 08:28:55 linuxvm kernel: [ 1312.886635] init: mysql respawning too fast, stopped

The problem was that I had incorrect values in /etc/mysql/my.cnf. In my case it was an incorrect bind address that I just uncommented.

#
# Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on
# localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure.
# bind-address = 172.17.1.1
#

levente@linuxvm:/$ sudo start mysql
mysql start/running, process 5432

Yay!

Originally posted to: http://www.thesysadminhimself.com/2012/11/mysql-55-service-won-start-job-failed.html