On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:34:43 -0700, plenty900 wrote:

> It turns out, my [hostname].err file shows that mysqld can't find a
> file called host.frm.
>
> I don't recall such a file when I recently installed MySQL under
> Windows.

This is not windows, doofus. The initial databases are not installed by
default. YOU must do that if you want to run mysql and you do that by
executing mysql_install_db. Then you must

chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql

Only then can you start mysqld and enter root's password.