here is what I get in another console when I do "service mysqld start" ----------------------------------- 060125 23:06:06 mysqld started Cannot initialize InnoDB as 'innodb_data_file_path' is not set. If you do not want to use transactional InnoDB tables, add a line skip-innodb to the [mysqld] section of init parameters in your my.cnf or my.ini. If you want to use InnoDB tables, add to the [mysqld] section, for example, innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend But to get good performance you should adjust for your hardware the InnoDB startup options listed in section 2 at http://www.innodb.com/ibman.html 060125 23:06:06 /usr/libexec/mysqld: Incorrect information in file: './mysql/host.frm' 060125 23:06:06 mysqld ended