I\'m on a Mac OSX Mountain Lion. Xampp won\'t let me start MySQL server.
I have set the permissions to Read/Write for everyone and every file in the XAMPP folder.
chmod -R 777 /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/var
fixed the problem for me. Refer - StackOverflow question
However do not do this in production servers, you may need to change the owner or group (chown or chgrp to resolve the problem.
chown
chgrp