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I unfortunately messed up my mysql installation, when I thought I could just install mariadb next to it. Now I am not even able to remove and re-install it. As I have a lot of other things set up in this system I would like to avoid to freshly install Ubuntu.

So far I tried everything that was proposed in this answer and also what is proposed here. However I end up with the following error message:

Error message in terminal

What can I do to rescue the system. I don't care about the data in the sql database as this is gone for good now I believe.

When trying to sudo dpkg --purge --force-all mysql-server and sudo apt install mysql-server I get the error message:

update-alternatives: error: alternative path /etc/mysql/mysql.cnf doesn't exist
dpkg: error processing package mysql-server-5.7 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dpendency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server:
mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.7; however:
Package mysql-server-5.7 is not configured yet. 

dpkg: error processing package mysql-server (--configured): 
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport repport written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. 
Errors were encountered while processing: 
mysql-server-5.8 
mysql-server 
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Axel
  • 143

2 Answers2

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With user Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's help I was able to detect that the problem was a process running in the background that was still blocking files. After killing that process and using sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql-\* to remove every last bit of mysql on the system I freshly installed mysql.

Axel
  • 143
1

I suggest you list what you have connected with mysql:

apt list --installed | grep mysql

It is just OK to purge mysql-common because w/o that package mysql will not work.

apt purge mysql-common

I tested on my end and it will also remove and purge this :

Purg mariadb-server [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg mariadb-server-10.1 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg mariadb-client-10.1 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg percona-toolkit [3.0.6+dfsg-2]
Purg libdbd-mysql-perl [4.046-1]
Purg mariadb-server-core-10.1 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg mariadb-client-core-10.1 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg libmariadbclient18 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic] [libmysqlclient18:amd64 ]
Purg libmysqlclient18 [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg libmysqlclient20 [5.7.23-0ubuntu0.18.04.1]
Purg mariadb-common [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
Purg mysql-common [1:10.1.35+maria-1~bionic]
prosti
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