Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist

Question

I am on a server that has afresh install on RHEL 5. I was able to install Apache and PHP just fine., but I am having serious trouble with my MySQL installation. I tried t

Answer 1

The root of my problem seemed to be selinux, which was turned on (enforcing) automatically on OS install.

I wanted my mysql in /data.

After verifying that my.cnf had:

datadir=/data/mysql

(and leaving the socket at /var/lib/mysql) I executed the command to turn off selinux for mysqld (alternative is to turn it off completely):

setsebool -P mysqld_disable_trans=1

I ran the following commands:

> chown -R mysql .
> chgrp -R mysql .
> mysql_install_db --user=mysql

I started the mysql daemon and everything worked fine after that.

Answer 2

I just met the same problem with mysql 5.7 on OSX:

rm -rf {datadir}
mysqld --initialize --datadir {datadir}
mysqld --datadir {datadir}

Answer 3

In my case the path of MySQL data folder had a special character "ç" and it make me get...

Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist.

I'm have removed all special characters and everything works.

Answer 4

I had the same issue in trying to start the server and followed the "checked" solution. But still had the problem. The issue was the my /etc/my.cnf file was not pointing to my designated datadir as defined when I executed the mysql_install_db with --datadir defined. Once I updated this, the server started correctly.

Answer 5

My case on Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS was similar to others with my.cnf, but for me the cause was a ~/.my.cnf that was leftover from a previous installation. After deleting that file and purging/re-installing mysql-server, it worked fine.

Answer 6

When download mysql zip version, if run mysqld directly, you'll get this error: 2016-02-18T07:23:48.318481Z 0 [ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.user' doesn't exist 2016-02-18T07:23:48.319482Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting

You have to run below command first: mysqld --initialize

Make sure your data folder is empty before this command.