Can't start mysql server on centos 6.9

Question

My OS is centos 6.9.

I updated the MySQL version from 5.1 to 5.5 and then it worked. But after sshd restarted, I can't start the MySQL server.

I tried :

# service mysql start

Error message:

Starting MySQL.Logging to '/var/lib/mysql/host.err'.
200425 12:44:09 mysqld_safe Directory '/var/lib/mysql' for UNIX socket file don't exists.
ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/var/lib/mysql/host.pid).

/var/lib/mysql directory doesn't exist and I am not sure why it doesn't exist.

I've read many forum posts but I didn't solve this yet.

How can I solve this?

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

If /var/lib/mysql doesn't exist, that is extremely concerning. Is it on a different file system that is not mounted? If you are lucky, only the mount point is missing and the file system isn't mounted. If that is not the case, I can only hope you have a backup. :-(