You don't want to start the server as root. That is a security hole. It should be started as user mysql.
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I logged in as an account administrator -- namely, the same user with owner/group permissions of the ./mysql/data folder
machine user name is NOT the same as MySQL user name.
How did you connect mysql client to MySQL server to see the test database?
You
should use something like this
>mysql -uroot -p
Enter the mysql root user password when prompted. If you haven't set a mysql root user password yet, it will be blank, just press enter.
If you instead connected like this
>mysql
then you have connected anonymously.
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3) I logged in with ./bin/mysqld_safe --user=[aforementioned owner] & and was able to shutdown with ./bin/mysqladmin -u root shutdown
That is starting the mysql server.
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4) Using the mysql_safe command (see item 3) is what allowed me to see the two databases called information_schema and test.
??????
That is starting the server.
You then need to connect with a mysql client to operate the database(s).
Good luck,
Barry.