restarting msql on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Without seeing the error log, my first guess is going to be a permissions issue with AppArmor. Try disabling it for a test and then restarting MySQL. If that works, then you need to either update the AppArmor config for MySQL or disable AppArmor all together.

[url]https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AppArmor[/url]