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 wasted many hours trying to fix this and in the end it turned out that it just needed full permissions on /tmp directory (i tried 755 and 766 but didn't work, only 777 works), so i ran:

sudo chmod 1777 /tmp

"the number 1 before 777 is called the sticky bit and it adds extra security to the folder, check this for more details about the sticky bit".

and reconfigured:

sudo dpkg --configure mysql-server-5.5

and mysql server started successfully.