Question

I don’t know if this problem is specific to my set up but when I add the line

log = /var/log/mysql.log

to the mysqld section of a copied my-large.cnf file and try to restart the mysql server I get the error

Starting MySQL. ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/var/lib/mysql/centos-server.pid).

I’ve created the file /var/log/mysql.log, set its owner and group to mysql and set the permissions on /var/log to 777 (for the moment)

I’m on centos, with mysql 5.6.5 m8 (the development release).

This is a snippet of the my.cnf file

[mysqld]
port            = 3306
socket          = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
skip-external-locking
key_buffer_size = 256M
max_allowed_packet = 1M
table_open_cache = 256
sort_buffer_size = 1M
read_buffer_size = 1M
read_rnd_buffer_size = 4M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
thread_cache_size = 8
query_cache_size= 16M
# Try number of CPU's*2 for thread_concurrency
thread_concurrency = 8
log = /var/log/mysql.log

Answer 1

Seems like the log directive is outdated and my.cnf requires the directive

general-log = 1

If specified like this the log file will be created in a default location (which on centos is /var/lib/mysql/centos-server.log)