Can't start MySQL5.5 on Ubuntu 12.04 - “dpkg: dependency problems”

Question

This appears to be a common problem on 12.04. I\'ve tried everthing in this thread including:

sudo apt-get clean

sudo apt-get autoclean

sudo apt-get remove         


        

Answer 1

I couldnt solve this problem with purging / manual deletion / anything that mysql / ubuntu forums advised me to do

instead, the solution for me was :

1) increase the memory of the VM that Ubuntu was running on

2) after checking /var/log/mysql/error.log, I found out that a specific file couldnt be created at /tmp :

Can't create/write to file '/tmp/ibeDIRhT' (Errcode: 13) InnoDB: Error: unable to create temporary file; errno: 13

I just chmod(ed) /tmp to allow this.

Lo and behold, next attempt of installing mysql was successful.

just in case anyone ever has this problem, purging isn't always the solution, you should check the log to see what error message you have. That might help