Centos – Remi Repo Mysql Server Not Starting

Executing the command to start the mysql service fails to start the mysql server.

[root@localhost]# service mysqld restart
Stopping mysqld:                                           [  OK  ]
MySQL Daemon failed to start.
Starting mysqld:                                           [FAILED]

Ran an strace on it

I have mysql mysql-server php php-mysql all from remi for the latest centos available versions

Here is my my.cnf file

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks;
# to do so, uncomment this line:
# symbolic-links=0

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

I think the strace is now linked in a comment

here is a dump of mysql_safe

[root@localhost var]# mysqld_safe
110209 15:11:47 mysqld_safe Logging to '/var/log/mysqld.log'.
110209 15:11:47 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql
110209 15:11:52 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid ended