Starting the Server 2.10.2 Starting the Server It is possible to put those statements in a file to be executed using the  init_file system variable, as discussed in Server Actions During Data Directory Initialization. This section describes how start the server on Unix and Unix-like systems. (For Windows, see Section 2.3.4.5, “Starting the Server for the First Time” .) For some suggested commands that you can use to test whether the server is accessible and working properly, see Section 2.10.3, “Testing the Server” . Start the MySQL server like this if your installation includes  mysqld_safe : For Linux systems on which MySQL is installed using RPM packages, server startup and shutdown is managed using systemd rather than  mysqld_safe , and mysqld_safe  is not installed. See Section 2.5.9, “Managing MySQL Server with systemd” . Start the server like this if your installation includes systemd support: Substitute the appropriate service name if it differs from  mysqld  (for example,  mysql  on SLES systems). It is important that the MySQL server be run using an unprivileged (non- root ) login account. To ensure this, run  mysqld_safe  as  root  and include the  --user  option as shown. Otherwise, you should execute the program while logged in as  mysql , in which case you can omit the  --user  option from the command. For further instructions for running MySQL as an unprivileged user, see Section 6.1.5, “How to Run MySQL as a Normal User” . If the command fails immediately and prints  mysqld ended , look for information in the error log (which by default is the  host_name .err  file in the data directory). If the server is unable to access the data directory it starts or read the grant tables in the  mysql  schema, it writes a message to its error log. Such problems can occur if you neglected to create the grant tables by initializing the data directory before proceeding to this step, or if you ran the command that initializes the data directory without the  --user  option. Remove the  data  directory and run the command with the  -- user  option. If you have other problems starting the server, see Section 2.10.2.1, “Troubleshooting Problems Starting the MySQL Server” . For more information about  mysqld_safe , see Section 4.3.2, “mysqld_safe — MySQL Server Startup Script” . For more information about systemd support, see Section 2.5.9, “Managing MySQL Server with systemd” . This section provides troubleshooting suggestions for problems starting the server. For additional suggestions for Windows systems, see Section 2.3.5, “Troubleshooting a Microsoft Windows MySQL Server Installation” . If you have problems starting the server, here are some things to try: •Check the error log to see why the server does not start. Log files are located in the data directory (typically  C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 8.0\data  on Windows,  /usr/local/ 2.10.2.1 Troubleshooting Problems Starting the MySQL Server Note CREATE USER ’root’@’::1’ IDENTIFIED BY ’ root-password ’; shell>  bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql & shell>  systemctl start mysqld 254