mysql

After my upgrade from Lucid to Precise (and thereby, from MySQL 5.1 to 5.5), I found that my MySQL instance was not running. When I tried to start the service all I got back was that it had failed to start.

I checked the system log (sudo tail /var/log/syslog) to see if I could divine the cause of this issue and I found the following messages:
init: mysql post-start process (5075) terminated with status 1
mysql respawning too fast, stopped

If you find that the really handy Excel spreadsheet import feature for MySQL is missing in PHPMyAdmin, it's because it has been removed. According to the PHPMyAdmin changelog:
3.4.5.0 (2011-09-14)
- [core] Remove library PHPExcel, due to license issues
- [export] Remove native Excel export modules (xls and xlsx formats)
- [import] Remove native Excel import modules (xls and xlsx formats)

If you're importing Open Office / Libre Office Calc files or Excel spreadsheets into MySQL using PHPMyAdmin, you might have run into the occasional case where the process hangs with either a partially imported set or no records at all. After some messing around, I have found that this usually happens when there's a problem with the input data. In my case, this usually stemmed from duplicate primary keys or similar issues. Unique keys were detected fine.

In other words, PEBKAC.

Earlier today, I was banging my head against the wall trying to import some data in a CSV file into MySQL. While my imports have gone well thus far, this time around I was dealing with data involving lots of strange diacritics, runic squiggles and other manners of gibberish that make the world as fun as it can be. In other words, I was dealing with Unicode.

While trying to import a CSV file into MySQL today using the LOAD DATA INFILE command, I ran into the following situation:

mysql> LOAD DATA INFILE 'foo.csv' INTO TABLE bar FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' ENCLOSED BY '#' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r' (a, b);
ERROR 29 (HY000): File 'foo.csv' not found (Errcode: 13)

The file exists fine and the permissions are also kosher. After much gnashing of teeth and perusing of documentation, I found out that local file sources require the LOCAL keyword:

I installed MySQL on my local server today and when I went to access it via mysql_secure_installation to set my root password etc., I ran into the following curious error:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

While I initially thought that it was some kind of installation issue, after much scratching of pate, I realised that Occam was right and that I should be checking the simpler things first. Sure enough, after a quick check, I found that MySQL was not even running :/