Server won't start with default-character-set

MySQL & MariaDB Other MySQL® Questions
1

When I attempt to start Percona 5.5 on RHEL 6.4 with this my.cnf: [INDENT]

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
symbolic-links=0
default-character-set=utf8
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[/INDENT]

I get: [INDENT]

Starting MySQL (Percona Server)......The server quit without updating PID file (/var/lib/mysql/************.org.pid).

[/INDENT]

If I comment out the default-character-set line (line 6) it starts ok.

This config was copied from a mysql server that is being replaced. It was running Fedora 14 with mysql Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.1.58. I am trying to start the server and then will restore from a backup created by mysqldump. So there is no data in place yet.

Any ideas?

2

Can you please post relevant lines from mysql error log.

3

That is the other problem - /var/lib/mysql/mysqld.log is empty. At first I suspected SELinux, but the binary file and slow query log are created, so as far as I know /var/lib/mysql has the proper settings. The above my.cnf example was pared down to the basics to get the failure. Here is the current my.cnf I am using to start the server and there is still no mysqld.log:

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql

# logging query settings
log_output=FILE
slow-query-log=1
expire_logs_days=7
long_query_time = 1
log-queries-not-using-indexes
log-slow-admin-statements

general_log_file=/var/lib/mysql/mysqld.log
slow_query_log_file=/var/lib/mysql/slow_query.log
log-bin=/var/lib/mysql/mysqld-bin

# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks
symbolic-links=0

server-id=2
old-passwords=1

#default-character-set=utf8
#default-collation=utf8_general_ci

binlog_format = 'MIXED'
max_allowed_packet=32MB
expire_logs_days=30

# performance tuning settings
key_buffer_size=128MB
thread_cache=16
query_cache_size=128MB
query_cache_limit=8MB
tmp_table_size=64MB
max_heap_table_size=32MB
join_buffer_size=8MB
table_definition_cache=1024
table_open_cache=1024

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
4

Finally found the answer. The two server commands (default-character-set and default-collation) were dropped in ver 5.5. The new commands are: character-set-server, and collation-server.