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

This error also happened when switching from MySQL to MariaDB (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-5.7/+bug/1490071).

The MySQL binary data files were not compatible with MariaDB so I switched back to MySQL because I did not have time to mess with mysqldump.

First I had to move MariaDB data away from /var/lib/mysql, then install MySQL and then move my original data from /var/lib/mysql-5.7 (this backup was automatically created before the error) to /var/lib/mysql.