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On Tue, Jun 27, 2006 at 11:21:13AM +0100, Neil Winchurst wrote: > Paul Weaver <iso@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > You do have a mysql user on your machine don't you? Genrally it's not a > > good idea to run things like mysql as root, as a buffer overflow or > > similar will give a hacker root access. > > > Yes, indeed. It is quite a long time since I last used mysql, so I am > taking some time to get back into the swing of it all. I must look out > my old book on it. > > Once I have the server running I log back to my normal user and work > from there. I never run anything as root except for the odd time, such > as chmod, when I need to be root. Then I run the command and exit back > to neil immediately. That's fine, but mysql is still running as root. A mysql command that caused mysqld to execute a local program would have full access to your machine (cat /etc/passwd, cat /etc/shadow for example). Running the daemon as another user The fact that mysqld launches fine as root, but not as "mysql", if you have a 'mysql' local user (grep mysql /etc/passwd) indicates a permissions problem. My mysqld process has a few temp files open, in /tmp, and a lot of stuff in /var/lib/mysql/ open. I think you've alreaady checked it, but /var/lib/mysql/ and its files should be owned by "mysql" # chown -R mysql /var/lib/mysql # ls -ld /var/lib/mysql/ drwxr-xr-x 7 mysql mysql 4096 2006-05-29 14:11 /var/lib/mysql/ (your group might be different) This might all be fine, I can't remember from earlier in the thread. At one point, however, a log mentioned you had a problem writing to "/root/tmp". If that directory is like mine drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-01-11 07:32 tmp Then that would mean the mysqld daemon couldn't run as anyhting but root. chmod 777ing this directory and launching mysqld as --user=mysql, and checking the log, would indicate if this were the problem (although that's not the final solution). Of course it works now, but I alwasys think it's better to iron out potential problems earlier on :) -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html