Re: HELP! mysql-server broken on FreeBSD 13 Release p12

> On 27 Apr 2026, at 23:10, William Dudley <wfdudley@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> During a recent pkg upgrade, pkg uninstalled my mysql server.  I saw that, but I figured
> that some other thing had happened so I'd still have mysql running.  HAH!
> I rebooted the machine last night, and the running instance of mysql80-server
> obviously disappeared.
> 
> I installed mysql84-server, but it fails, and mysql-client complains:
> ERROR 1524 (HY000): Plugin 'mysql_native_password' is not loaded
> The fix for this seems to involve having a running mysql server.
> 
> I tried installing mysql80-server, which is what was running before.  Install happened,
> but running it fails silently.  Running from a shell (as opposed to from /usr/local/etc/c.d/mysql-server) just fails with no output to terminal, no running server.
> 
> How do I get mysql running again?
> 
> Thanks,
> Bill Dudley
> This email is free of malware because I run Linux.

Before doing anything else, make a backup copy of the current MySQL datadir, for example:

service mysql-server stop
cp -fr /var/db/mysql /var/db/mysql.backup-before-84-retry

If MySQL 8.4 has already started and upgraded the internal data dictionary/system tables, then you will not be able to use the same datadir with MySQL 8.0 again.

Try reinstalling MySQL 8.4 and add the following option to your my.cnf file:

[mysqld]
mysql-native-password=ON

Then run:

service mysql-server start

If it still does not start, check the MySQL error log:

tail -n 100 /var/db/mysql/*.err