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MySQL: Invalid (old?) table or database name

Description​

After updating MySQL to a newer version, you might encounter the following error message when trying to start the MySQL service again:

[ERROR] [MY-010520] [Server] Invalid (old?) table or database name 'lost+found'
[ERROR] [MY-010022] [Server] Failed to Populate DD tables.
[ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting

This might especially be the case if your /var/lib/mysql data directory is located on a separate partition or disk which causes the lost+found directory to be created by the filesystem.

MySQL then tries to treat the directory as a database and fails to populate the data dictionary tables.

Solution​

In order to solve the issue and start the MySQL service again you have two possibilities. First is to change the permissions of the folder so no one can access it anymore. That can be done with the following command:

chmod 0 /var/lib/mysql/lost+found

The second possibility is to instruct MySQL to ignore the lost+found directory. This can be done by adding the following line to your MySQL configuration file (usually located at /etc/my.cnf or /etc/mysql/my.cnf) under the mysqld section:

ignore-db-dir=lost+found
tip

If your error message mentions a different directory than lost+found, you should replace lost+found with the directory name mentioned in the error message.