MySQL Bugs: #11802: Can't start server - mysqld --bootstrap hangs forever

Bug #11802	Can't start server - mysqld --bootstrap hangs forever
Submitted:	8 Jul 2005 1:24	Modified:	3 Aug 2005 10:29
Reporter:	Jose Luis Tallon	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server	Severity:	S1 (Critical)
Version:	4.0.24	OS:	Linux (Debian GNU/Linux)
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
When installing or trying to start (the therefore half-configured server), the initscript hangs forever.
A ps ax shows that it is a "mysqld --bootstrap" trying to start.
The error in the syslog is: "Can't create interrupt-thread (error 11, errno: 11)"

Kernel: Linux-2.4.31, self compiled
Libc:     libc6 from Debian 3.1 'Sarge'

Please note that ALL my other MySQL installations work perfectly. It is just this particular one server. I am completely puzzled by this, since i never had any problems at all in 6 years.

How to repeat:
Just install or try to start mysql (by means of the supplied initscript)
This is most probably NOT Debian specific... ideas?

I wasn't able to repeat the behavior reported on Knoppix 3.7 (Debian based)
and Slackware 10.1.

Any ideas on what can be the reason for this? It is just in this particular machine that it does not work... :-S

Any pointers or suggestions? What shall i check?
Could you possibly tell me how to debug this and see where does the problem come from?
Do you need any additional information on which libraries are installed?

I have run memtest86 and rebooted several times, so it is not a problem with memory. Everything else works fine (not a processor problem, either, i think)

Thanks in advance for your time.

On different systems errno 11 seems to have different meaning. But on Linux it looks to be EAGAIN.

Could you try to wrap the pthread_create() in question (search in mysqld.cc for the error message you got, about "interrupt-thread") in a do { } while, repeating it while the error is EAGAIN ?
(with a small sleep between two calls, perhaps).

We cannot blindly do this change, as we cannot repeat the problem :(
But if it'll work for you, we can apply this fix.

Adding the do{ }while(error==EAGAIN); at sql/mysqld.cc did the trick for the first error message. Mysqld won't continue, however, due to the same problem within InnoDB. Patching there also didn't help.

Now i suspect some kind of /weird/ hardware failure :-S
Thank you for your support -- closing this bug now.