MySQL® Administrator's Guide

shell> ./mysqld --basedir=/usr/local --verbose --help

You can specify other options such as --datadir as well, but note that --verbose and --help must be the last options. (Prior to MySQL 4.1, omit the --verbose option.)

Once you determine the path settings you want, start the server without --verbose and --help.

If mysqld is currently running, you can find out what path settings it is using by executing this command:

shell> mysqladmin variables

Or:

shell> mysqladmin -h  host_name variables

host_name is the name of the MySQL server host.

If you get Errcode 13 (which means Permission denied) when starting mysqld, this means that the access privileges of the data directory or its contents do not allow the server access. In this case, you change ...