rm Broken Pipe

[gstonian]

I'm trying to start mysql but as it didn't come down cleanly it's not restarting with the following error

mysqld daemon not started

rm: file.pid not removed.  Broken pipe

Fatal error: Can't remove the pid file: file.pid

Please remove it manually and start ./bin/mysqld_safe again

I can't manually remove it either - any ideas ? 

rm -rf file.pid

rm: file.pid not removed.  Broken pipe

Points awarded if they are still valid in this new community :) 

[Dennis Handly · Accepted solution]

>I'm trying to start mysql but as it didn't come down cleanly it's not restarting with the following error
>rm: file.pid not removed.  Broken pipe

Is this a named pipe?  If so, you need to find out who has it open.  You need to kill mysql.

Anything in the pipe, it probably has the PID to kill?

>I can't manually remove it either - any ideas?

Plenty:

1) Use lsof to find out who has it opened and kill it.

2) Reboot.

3) mv the pipe to another name.

4) Use /sbin/unlink to wave bye-bye to the file.

>Points awarded if they are still valid in this new community.

They are called kudos.  See the star on each reply.

[Matti_Kurkela]

What does "ls -l file.pid" say?

"Broken pipe" error from a regular rm command with no input or output redirection makes no sense, even if the file to be deleted is a named pipe. Any "broken pipe" error should go to the process owning the pipe, not to the rm command. Something else must be causing the non-sensical error messages.

At a guess, what does "ll /dev/null" say?

The correct output on HP-UX should be like:

$ ll /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-   1 bin        bin          3 0x000002 Sep  6 15:50 /dev/null

If /dev/null has been removed, or replaced with a regular file, it should be reconstructed like this:

mv /dev/null /dev/null.broken
mknod /dev/null c 3 0x000002
chmod 666 /dev/null
chown bin:bin /dev/null