Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:15:25 +0000
From: "Paul F. Johnson" <paul@all-the-johnsons.co.uk>
 
Removed the entire mysql* rpms, installed fresh via yum, rm
-rf /var/lib/mysql, enabled the service, did the mysql_install_db and
all is good.

Trying to start the server gives me this though...

111212 07:49:18 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases
from /var/lib/mysql
[...] 
111212  7:49:20 [ERROR] /usr/libexec/mysqld: Can't find file:
'./mysql/proxies_priv.frm' (errno: 13)
111212  7:49:20 [ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege
tables: Can't find file: './mysql/proxies_priv.frm' (errno: 13)

I had that kind of issue, no later than today... on a just migrated Fedora 16 (from a Fedora 14 machine). There were two things:
* I started the mysql service with 'systemctl start mysql.service', instead of 'systemctl start mysqld.service'
* some directories within /var/lib/mysql were owned by 'root', instead of by 'mysql' (id=27). http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=1279 also clearly states that errno=13 comes from access rights which are not granted.

Well, I stopped all the MySQL services ('systemctl stop mysql.service', 'systemctl stop mysqld.service'), performed 'chown -R mysql.mysql /var/lib/mysql', and restarted MySQL ('systemctl stop mysqld.service'). And it eventually worked.

Hope that it will help...

Regards

Denis