Can't start MySQL on Fedora 20

Question

I'm a newbie with Fedora and MySQL. I just installed Fedora 20 (virtual), then installed Apache and started it and then installed MySQL. When I tried to start MySQL using this command:

sudo service mysqld start

I get this:

Redirecting to /bin/systemctl start  mysqld.service
Job for mariadb.service failed. See 'systemctl status mariadb.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details.

I searched and found another command to start MySQL:

systemctl start mysqld.service

This second command echoes the same thing. As it suggests I tried:

 systemctl status mariadb.service

It gave some information:

 mariadb.service - MariaDB database server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mariadb.service; enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2014-02-13 09:23:19 IRST; 13min ago
  Process: 22189 ExecStartPost=/usr/libexec/mariadb-wait-ready $MAINPID (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
  Process: 22188 ExecStart=/usr/bin/mysqld_safe --basedir=/usr (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
  Process: 22165 ExecStartPre=/usr/libexec/mariadb-prepare-db-dir %n (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 22188 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
   CGroup: /system.slice/mariadb.service

Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mariadb-prepare-db-dir[22165]: chmod: changing permissions of ‘/var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log’: Opera...mitted
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mysqld_safe[22188]: 140213 09:23:18 mysqld_safe Logging to '/var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log'.
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mysqld_safe[22188]: 140213 09:23:18 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mysqld_safe[22188]: /usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 138: /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log: Permission denied
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mysqld_safe[22188]: /usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 182: /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log: Permission denied
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain mysqld_safe[22188]: 140213 09:23:18 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid ended
Feb 13 09:23:18 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: mariadb.service: main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Feb 13 09:23:19 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: mariadb.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Feb 13 09:23:19 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start MariaDB database server.
Feb 13 09:23:19 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Unit mariadb.service entered failed state.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

So Failed to start MariaDB database server. I don't know exactly what MariaDB is, so I read about some about differences between MySQL and MariaDB, but that didn't help solving my problem. Can you please tell me what I should do?

Answer 1

line 138: /var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log: Permission denied

It looks like the /var/log/mariadb directory has wrong permissions and mysql cannot write to it. Check them out. Usually there is a mysql user/group created for the database to run so something like:

chown -R mysql.mysql /var/log/mariadb

may most probably solve your trouble.