Linux – How to automatically start thesql after server restart (CentOS + other distros)

mysqladmin shutdown

should work to shutdown the server.

I see two likely possibilities:

1. MySQL has a problem and is refusing to shut down for some reason.
2. The previous admin did something strange. Either modified the init.d script or didn't bother using the Debian packages at all to install MySQL.

What does dpkg --list mysql\* say?

What does /var/log/mysql.err say? Or the other mysql logs?

EDIT:

So mysqladmin shutdown worked?

According to that, the mysql-server package is installed (mysql-server-5.0; the mysql-server package is probably just a stub). So they may have installed over it? Running debsums mysql-server-5.0 might tell you more. dpkg --listfiles mysql-server-5.0 could help, too...

What's actually in /etc/init.d/mysql? I haven't checked that specific version of the package, but it should try to use mysqladmin shutdown ... Maybe you're lucky and they only broke that...

InnoDB is insanely picky about it's config; if something's not right, it'll just give up and go home. To make a change to the log file size without data loss:

1. Revert any config changes you've made to the log file size and start MySQL again.
2. In your running MySQL: SET GLOBAL innodb_fast_shutdown=0;
3. Stop MySQL
4. Make the configuration change to the log file size.
5. Delete both log files.
6. Start MySQL. It will complain about the lack of log files, but it'll create them and all will be well.