I have performed a charset change via my.ini into utf8 and forgot a user loggen in in another terminal session, when I performed a service restart.Initially systemd reported a problem stopping the service while the service was still working. After a system reboot through systemd was never able to start the service again.$ sudo service mysql status mysql.service - MySQL Community Server   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/mysql.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)   Active: activating (start-post) (Result: exit-code)   Process: 2750 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/mysqld (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)  Process: 2747 ExecStartPre=/usr/share/mysql/mysql-systemd-start pre (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 2750 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE);         : 2751 (mysql-systemd-s)    Tasks: 2 (limit: 512)   CGroup: /system.slice/mysql.service           control             2751 /bin/bash /usr/share/mysql/mysql-systemd-start post             2838 sleep 1systemd[1]: Starting MySQL Community Server...systemd[1]: mysql.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILUREThat is the current status of the service as reported by systemd.Also when I try starting the service: $ sudo systemctl start mysql.serviceI get a failure analyzed to the following from journalctl:$ journalctl -xe...-- Unit mysql.service has begun starting up. pam_unix(sudo:session): session closed for user root    user : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/var/log/mysql ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/systemctl start mysql.service pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by user(uid=0) mysql.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0) (root) CMD (  [ -x /usr/lib/php/sessionclean ] && /usr/lib/php/sessionclean) pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root Failed to start MySQL Community Server.-- Subject: Unit mysql.service has failed-- Defined-By: systemd-- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel...Which suggests having something to do with the pam authentication module. But I don't know how to deal with it...
mysql service restarted during user being connected lead to failing service
systemd;mysql;services
I finally solved the issue by logging in as root using:sudo mysql -uroot -ppasword:******and then exitingmysql> exitand the service started working (and restarting normally).As it seems the service was in a zombie state!Even though reported as not running by systemd it was actually running because I was able to login with root and issue a show databases; command which worked like a charm!Strange issue indeed! By the way if someone knows why I need to use sudo to login as root in the database while all other users are logged in with a simple call to mysql client and their credentials. I would love to understand why! There seems to be strange relationship between linux users and mysql users which I have never really understood. 