Resolution - Cannot Start MySQL on WSL
insights Stats
SQL relational databases incl. SQLite, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.
Issue context
After installed MySQL server on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL, distro Ubuntu-18.04), the following command failed:
sudo service mysql start
Looking into the log file '/var/log/mysql/error.log', it shows the following error:
2021-01-05T10:50:42.322149Z 0 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '127.0.0.1'; port: 3306 2021-01-05T10:50:42.322313Z 0 [Note] - '127.0.0.1' resolves to '127.0.0.1'; 2021-01-05T10:50:42.322380Z 0 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '127.0.0.1'. 2021-01-05T10:50:42.322439Z 0 [ERROR] Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port: Permission denied 2021-01-05T10:50:42.322470Z 0 [ERROR] Do you already have another mysqld server running on port: 3306 ? 2021-01-05T10:50:42.322509Z 0 [ERROR] Aborting
Basically port 3306 number cannot be bound.
Find out the root cause
First run the following command in windows Command Prompt:
netstat -an | grep :3306
The result is empty in my scenario, i.e. no current process is bound to port 3306.
Then run the following command to find out Hyper-V reserved ports if Hyper-V is enabled on your computer:
netsh interface ipv4 show excludedportrange protocol=tcp
In my system, it outputs the following:
Protocol tcp Port Exclusion Ranges Start Port End Port ---------- -------- 80 80 1542 1641 1642 1741 1742 1841 1842 1941 1942 2041 2042 2141 2282 2381 2410 2509 2611 2710 2711 2810 2811 2910 2911 3010 3011 3110 3111 3210 3211 3310 3311 3410 3605 3704 3705 3804 5357 5357 5700 5700 8081 8081 8082 8082 8884 8884 50000 50059 *
Port 3306 was reserved.
Solution 1 - Change MySQL port number to a different one
In WSL, perform the following actions:
- Change directory to MySQL folder:
cd /etc/mysql/
- Edit file my.cnf (sudo vi my.cnf) to change default port number to 10101 (or any other available port number in your system):
[mysqld] general_log_file = /home/tangr/mysql-logs/mysql.log general_log = 1 port = 10101
The default settings are:
[mysqld_safe] socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock nice = 0 [mysqld] # # * Basic Settings # user = mysql pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock port = 3306 basedir = /usr datadir = /var/lib/mysql tmpdir = /tmp lc-messages-dir = /usr/share/mysql skip-external-locking # # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. bind-address = 127.0.0.1
- Restart the service:
sudo service mysql restart
- You should be able to see the following messages when it is successful:
$ sudo service mysql restart * Stopping MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ] * Starting MySQL database server mysqld [ OK ]
Solution 2 - Free port 3306
Follow these steps to free port 3306:
- Disable Hyper-V via Control Panel Windows Features GUI or the following command:
dism.exe /Online /Disable-Feature:Microsoft-Hyper-V
- After reboot, reserve port 3306:
netsh int ipv4 add excludedportrange protocol=tcp startport=3306 numberofports=1
- Enable Hyper-V again via Control Panel or the following command:
dism.exe /Online /Enable-Feature:Microsoft-Hyper-V /All
Now MySQL service should be able to use this default port 3306.