Screwed up installing phpmyadmin and now mysql / mariadb won't start

Question

I'm using ubuntu 14.04 and did a apt-get install phpmyadmin I went through the install process and forgot to check off an option to install it for apache2. The install didn't finish, but it must have edited something on my system and I can't seem to start mysqld anymore.

root@drupalpro:/var/log/mysql# service mysql start
 * Starting MariaDB database server mysqld                                                                                                                                                                                                                     [fail] 
root@drupalpro:/var/log/mysql# service mysql status
 * MariaDB is stopped.
root@drupalpro:/var/log/mysql# 

When starting mysqld it just says starting and then hits me back to the prompt. And mysql isn't started at all.

How would one fix something like this? This is crazy that just because I forgot to check off a checkbox it just screwed up my entire system.

Answer 1

I got it working by:

1. Create a new virtualbox image with the same os and working mysql.
2. I copied over the entire /var/lib/mysql folder from the broken vbox image to the new system.
3. Rename the new mysql folder to mysql_new and copy in the old on.
4. Load up phpmyadmin
5. Export the database you need.
6. delete the old mysql folder
7. rename back the mysql_new to mysql and import it back.