For a strange reason, I've put the following line in my /etc/mysql/my.cnf : [mysqld] init_connect = "SET NAMES utf8" but now, when I'm doing : aragorn ~ # /etc/init.d/mysql start Authenticating panard. Password: * Caching service dependencies ... [ ok ] * working on 0 * Starting mysqld0 (/etc/mysql/my.cnf) ... * MySQL NOT started (0) After some researches, and some echo laters, I saw the problem was my init_connect = "SET NAMES utf8" (just add a echo $my_defaults at line 109, you will see --init_connect=SET NAMES utf8 then mysqld fails because of an invalid argument 'NAMES'... Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.add some option containing more than 1 word to my.cnf (like init_connect = "set names utf8" 2./etc/init.d/mysql start ragorn ~ # emerge info Portage 2.0.53 (selinux/2005.1/x86/hardened, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.5-r3, 2.6.14-hardened i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.14-hardened i686 Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.00GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] dev-lang/python: 2.3.5, 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.14 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20-r1 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -mmmx -O3 -pipe -fstack-protector" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control /var/www/localhost/htdocs/phpBB" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -mmmx -O3 -pipe -fstack-protector" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig ccache distlocks nodoc noinfo sandbox selinux sfperms strict userpriv" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.ovh.net/gentoo-distfiles" LANG="fr_FR.utf8" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.fr.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="acpi apache2 async audiofile berkdb bzip2 clamav crypt curl dba dedicated dlloader expat flash gd gdbm geoip gmp hardened idn imagemagick imap innodb ipv6 ipv6arpa jpeg lcms ldap mhash mng ncurses nls pam pcre php pic png python readline sasl selinux slang ssl symlink tcpd tiff udev unicode usb utf8 x86 xml xml2 zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS
# tail -n2 /etc/conf.d/mysql # Last but not least, spaces are NOT allowed inside the parameters
I've searched an alternative solution for this, but look impossible. If someone has some ideas please reopen the bug
