A few days ago I got a shiny new macbook at work and I needed to install my dev environment again.
I came across a few problems when installing the new MySQL community server package though, which had been upgraded to 5.5 instead of the 5.1 release I had on my old Mac.
Fixing MySQL server startup
The first problem I came across was that the server would not start properly, using the prefpane item.
This is easily fixed by editing the file /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server and going to line 46 + 47 and replacing the lines there with this:
basedir=/usr/local/mysql datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data
You can now use the prefpane item to start your MySQL server.
source: http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?11,399397,399606#msg-399606
Fixing the autostart
If you are like me, you like it when all the services start at boot, since you don’t have to start ‘em by hand.
However, there is a problem with getting MySQL server 5.5 to start using the prefpane.
In order to get the autostart up and running you need to fix the privileges on the startup item.
Open a terminal and do the following:
sudo chown :wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM sudo chown :wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/StartupParameters.plist
After that you need to restart the computer. Logging out and back ind will not do the job.
At the risk of sounding spammy, this was exactly my issue and your described steps solved it.
Thanks!
np, glad it worked for others as well