Information Needing to be Added Regarding non-Standard Data Path

[Norman Lancaster]

Greetings,

I am not a first-time MySQL user, however I have very limited experiance with it. I have just finished installing and testing mysqld-opt.exe from the MySQL 4.0.25 Windows Binary Distrobution, using the Compiled HTML help file as an installation guide. While testing, I encountered the following error message in the file %COMPUTERNAME%.err in my data directory:

"Fatal error: Can't open privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist"

The cause of this problem was two-fold.

1) Use of non-standard Installation and Data Paths:
basedir=E:\\MySQL
datadir=H:\\database

2) Lack of the "mysql" database.

I fixed the error by copying the subdirectories "mysql" and "test" from the directory %MySQL Install Directory%\\data into H:\\database. This solution came quick enough, however I half stumbled onto it. Perhaps a section on using non-standard data paths should be added to the manual detailing this step? Or perhaps the section "2.3.14. Troubleshooting a MySQL Installation Under Windows", under the heading "System error 1067 has occurred. Fatal error: Can't open privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist" should be updated with this information, as this heading does indeed deal with issues resulting from non-standard data paths.

It should be noted that I am using a current document for referance (downloaded only a few hours ago). It should also be noted that although the "mysql" database is mentioned in the post-installation procedures, no mention is made of ensuring that this database resides in your data directory.

Either way, this seems like a vital setup step for non-standard data paths that should definatley be included in the documentation.

Thank you for your time,
QBRADQ