I used to put my mysql data dir to /home/mysql, just to separated the partition so when something goes wrong or upgrading the OS I won’t lose my mysql data just because I forgot to backup it.

After I upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 9.04 suddenly my mysql failed to start.
The strange thing the only data dir seems working is putting it on /var/lib/mysql which is the default directory for mysql data dir.

After browsing around I found out that it is apparmor that prevent mysql datadir on different directory.

So the easy way to solve this is to remove apparmor : apt-get –purge remove apparmor

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