Two different MYSQl instances on same machine?
Since I am doing partial recovery on a damaged database (I did an iso image cold backup, but did not give the iso maker the proper options and ended up with DOS 8.1 filenames, when they should have been Joliet Long names) I must have previously used the option --skip-grant .

i used the command 
    mysqld_safe --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/mybackup.cnf --skip-grant
and the database started up fine.

Now to continue recovering what I can.