I'm seeing the exact same behaviour in a brand new Xen domU installed with xen-create-image.
I installed mysql with 'apt-get install mysql-server' I tried purging mysql-server* and wiping out database files with "rm -rf /var/lib/mysql", but the install after that didn't do much better. syslog shows exactly the same contents as was reported by Flavio. so, there's something about a syntax error before 'ALTER TABLE ...', then IP bind problems, and then an error about a "plugin" table already existing, and then 'mysqladmin ... ping' fails. ii libdbd-mysql-perl 4.016-1 Perl5 database interface to the MySQL database ii libmysqlclient16 5.1.49-3 MySQL database client library ii mysql-client 5.1.49-3 MySQL database client (metapackage depending on the latest version) ii mysql-client-5.1 5.1.49-3 MySQL database client binaries ii mysql-common 5.1.49-3 MySQL database common files, e.g. /etc/mysql/my.cnf iU mysql-server 5.1.49-3 MySQL database server (metapackage depending on the latest version) iF mysql-server-5.1 5.1.49-3 MySQL database server binaries and system database setup ii mysql-server-core-5.1 5.1.49-3 MySQL database server binaries -- Gabriel Filion -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org