Bug #38828 mysql_install_db fails, cannot find fill_help_tables.sql

Description:
While installing 5.0.51 on Linux mysql_install_db failed because it could not find the file fill_help_tables.sql under the directory specified by --basedir.

I found the file under datadir.

How to repeat:
I used

PREFIX=/usr/local/mysql

./configure --prefix=$PREFIX --with-server --with-innodb  --with-openssl \
                --datadir=/data/mysql     \
                --sysconfdir=$PREFIX  \
                --with-unix-socket-path=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock \
                --with-charset=latin1   \
                --with-comment  --without-debug --with-docs  \
                --with-mysqld-user=postgres

# (There is already a posgress user on this system but no mysqld user,
# so to get started I used that user rather than daemon)

make

make install

mysql_install_db --user=postgres

Suggested fix:
Either have 'make install' put the file under basedir, or have the mysql_install_db look for it under datadir.

Workaround:  I copied *.sql from /data/mysql/mysql to /usr/local/mysql/share 
Then I could get the server up and running.

Thank you for the bug report. Could you please try the latest released version 5.0.67. Thanks in advance.

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a month, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

Sorry I missed your comment.  I'll probably have an opportunity to try the latest version in a week or two, and I'll report back here on the result.

Alright. Please re-open this bug when you tested the newer version and comment the result. Thanks in advance.

No feedback was provided for this bug for over a month, so it is
being suspended automatically. If you are able to provide the
information that was originally requested, please do so and change
the status of the bug back to "Open".

Sorry for the delay, it took a while for me to get back to where I needed to do an other installation.   The problem is indeed present in 5.0.67 as well.

After saying `make install`  I then tried

  $PREFIX/bin/mysql_install_db --user=$USER

which resulted in the error message:
  FATAL ERROR: Could not find fill_help_tables.sql inside --basedir

  When using --basedir you must point either into a MySQL binary
  distribution directory or a compiled tree previously populated
  by 'make install'

The workaround is to copy the files from where they were installed by `make install`, which is $DATADIR/mysql, to where the mysql_install_db script is looking for them:

  mkdir $PREFIX/share
  cp $DATADIR/mysql/*.sql $PREFIX/share

Then the mysql_install_db works as expected.

This suggests that `make install` needs to be adjusted to put the files under $PREFIX/share

Thank you for the report.

Verified as described: all data which should be in share directory are in datadir.

Workaround: mv datadir/mysql share

I can't repeat this with the latest mysql-5.0 tree:

 $ ./configure --prefix=/var/tmp/install-38828 --datadir=/var/tmp/data-38828
 $ make; make install
 $ /var/tmp/install-38828/bin/mysql_install_db

works as expected so I think this has been fixed since.

Note that the ./configure --datadir and the --datadir used by mysql_install_db and mysqld are two different things.  ./configure --datadir refers to where architecture-independant files are installed (such as example configurations and language files), whereas --datadir for mysql_install_db and mysqld are where the mysqld databases are kept which is the meaning I think you were hoping for.

You probably want to use --localstatedir=/data/mysql rather than --datadir for ./configure, this will set mysqld --datadir to the specified value.