Changing data directory on MacOS Somona

[Marek Štrop]

I just installed MySQL 8.2 on my Mac. It stores data in /usr/local/mysql/data/ by default, where _mysql user and _mysql group owns the directory. I created a new data directory in the root of the external drive. Using System Setting I pointed the data directory to the one created on my external drive.

Doing this, the server doesn't start. This is the error log:

2023-11-20T08:28:39.195307Z 0 [System] [MY-010116] [Server] /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld (mysqld 8.2.0) starting as process 3811
2023-11-20T08:28:39.224697Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010091] [Server] Can't create test file /Volumes/MacExternal/MySQL/mysqld_tmp_file_case_insensitive_test.lower-test
2023-11-20T08:28:39.224723Z 0 [Warning] [MY-010159] [Server] Setting lower_case_table_names=2 because file system for /Volumes/MacExternal/MySQL/ is case insensitive
mysqld: File './binlog.index' not found (OS errno 1 - Operation not permitted)
2023-11-20T08:28:39.232188Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting
2023-11-20T08:28:39.232340Z 0 [System] [MY-010910] [Server] /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld: Shutdown complete (mysqld 8.2.0) MySQL Community Server - GPL.
2023-11-20T08:28:39.233095Z 0 [System] [MY-015016] [Server] MySQL Server - end.

So I changed the permissions on /Volumes/MacExternal/MySQL/ to 777, but MySQL still has the same problem. I even tried to change ownership of the external directory:

sudo chown _mysql:_mysql MySQL

, but it's not possible ( nothing happens after the command is issued ). So I gave MySQL full disc access, but it didn't help as well. Any idea, how I can move the database directory?