Database stopped responding and now fails to start

I have been running a website using Percona mysql for about 18 months now. Today suddenly the web site stopped working and I found that it was because the mysql database had stopped responding.

I logged into the server and ran “service mysql restart” and it showed that the database shutdown ok but then when it tried to restart it failed. I tried several more times to restart the database but always get a failed status. I rebooted the server and tried again, but that did not help.

root@ambling2:/var/lib/mysql# service mysql start

  • Starting MySQL (Percona Server) database server mysqld [fail]

I checked and there is plenty of disk space available:
root@ambling2:/var/lib/mysql# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1 704G 12G 657G 2% /var/lib/mysql

The last thing logged in the /var/lib/mysql/mysql-error.log file is the following:

140119 23:12:52 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: ‘5.5.35-33.0-log’ socket: ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ port: 3306 Percona Server (GPL), Release 33.0
140310 13:56:50 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Normal shutdown

140310 13:56:50 [Note] Event Scheduler: Purging the queue. 0 events
140310 13:56:52 [Warning] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Forcing close of thread 14664450 user: ‘root’

140310 13:56:52 [Warning] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Forcing close of thread 14662690 user: ‘root’

140310 13:56:52 InnoDB: Starting shutdown…
140310 13:56:52 InnoDB: Waiting for 1 pages to be flushed
140310 13:57:10 InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 214690824939
140310 13:57:10 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

140310 13:57:10 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/lib/mysql/mysql.pid ended

No new lines are added to the mysql-error.log file each time that I type ‘service mysql start’. The last lines are the lines logged when mysql shut down.

Where can I look next to try and determine why mysql is not working. Mysql has been installed and running fine for 18 months now and the server had been up over a month when the database suddenly stopped responding today.

Here is my /etc/mysql/my.cnf configuration:

The MySQL database server configuration file.

You can copy this to one of:

- “/etc/mysql/my.cnf” to set global options,

- “~/.my.cnf” to set user-specific options.

One can use all long options that the program supports.

Run program with --help to get a list of available options and with

–print-defaults to see which it would actually understand and use.

For explanations see

[url]http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/server-system-variables.html[/url]

This will be passed to all mysql clients

It has been reported that passwords should be enclosed with ticks/quotes

escpecially if they contain “#” chars…

Remember to edit /etc/mysql/debian.cnf when changing the socket location.

[client]
port = 3306
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Here is entries for some specific programs

The following values assume you have at least 32M ram

This was formally known as [safe_mysqld]. Both versions are currently parsed.

[mysqld_safe]
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
nice = 0

[mysqld]

* Basic Settings

user = mysql
pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
port = 3306
basedir = /usr
datadir = /var/lib/mysql
tmpdir = /tmp
lc-messages-dir = /usr/share/mysql
skip-external-locking

Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on

localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure.

bind-address = 127.0.0.1

* Fine Tuning

key_buffer = 16M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
thread_stack = 192K
thread_cache_size = 8

This replaces the startup script and checks MyISAM tables if needed

the first time they are touched

myisam-recover = BACKUP
#max_connections = 100
#table_cache = 64
#thread_concurrency = 10

* Query Cache Configuration

query_cache_limit = 1M
query_cache_size = 16M

* Logging and Replication

Both location gets rotated by the cronjob.

Be aware that this log type is a performance killer.

As of 5.1 you can enable the log at runtime!

#general_log_file = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log
#general_log = 1

Error log - should be very few entries.

log_error = /var/log/mysql/error.log

Here you can see queries with especially long duration

#log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log
#long_query_time = 2
#log-queries-not-using-indexes

The following can be used as easy to replay backup logs or for replication.

note: if you are setting up a replication slave, see README.Debian about

other settings you may need to change.

#server-id = 1
#log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log
expire_logs_days = 10
max_binlog_size = 100M
#binlog_do_db = include_database_name
#binlog_ignore_db = include_database_name

* InnoDB

InnoDB is enabled by default with a 10MB datafile in /var/lib/mysql/.

Read the manual for more InnoDB related options. There are many!

* Security Features

Read the manual, too, if you want chroot!

chroot = /var/lib/mysql/

For generating SSL certificates I recommend the OpenSSL GUI “tinyca”.

ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/cacert.pem

ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem

ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem

[mysqldump]
quick
quote-names
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[mysql]
#no-auto-rehash # faster start of mysql but no tab completition

[isamchk]
key_buffer = 16M

* IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file!

The files must end with ‘.cnf’, otherwise they’ll be ignored.

!includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/

I found a different error log in /var/log/mysql/error.log which does have information about the failed starts. This log shows the following:

140310 19:04:55 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid ended
140310 19:31:04 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql
140310 19:31:04 [Warning] Using unique option prefix key_buffer instead of key_buffer_size is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use the full name instead.
140310 19:31:04 [Warning] Using unique option prefix myisam-recover instead of myisam-recover-options is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use the full name instead.
140310 19:31:04 [Note] Plugin ‘FEDERATED’ is disabled.
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.4
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: Using Linux native AIO
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
140310 19:31:04 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
InnoDB: Error: log file ./ib_logfile0 is of different size 0 536870912 bytes
InnoDB: than specified in the .cnf file 0 5242880 bytes!
140310 19:31:04 [ERROR] Plugin ‘InnoDB’ init function returned error.
140310 19:31:04 [ERROR] Plugin ‘InnoDB’ registration as a STORAGE ENGINE failed.
140310 19:31:04 [ERROR] Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB
140310 19:31:04 [ERROR] Aborting

140310 19:31:04 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

140310 19:31:04 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid ended

Your ib_logfiles are 512MB but your my.cnf says they should be 5MB. So you either need to update the innodb_log_file_size value in your my.cnf to 512M or delete your ib_logfiles and let it recreate them as 5M (likely want to go with the first option and update your my.cnf).