I recently spun up a MySQL instance outside a container for what I hope is the last time. MySQL is very attached to /etc/mysql, /var/log/mysql and /var/lib/mys

I recently spun up a MySQL instance outside a container for what I hope is the last time. MySQL is very attached to /etc/mysql, /var/log/mysql and /var/lib/mysql, which makes sense if one thinks of it as a piece of a distribution and makes no sense if one thinks of it as a service that stores data in a filesystem or directory that one sets up for the purpose. Apparmor and (don’t get me started) SELinux dig this in deeper. What if you want two MySQLs on one host? What if you don’t want to mount something on /var/lib/mysql? If mysqld were invoked by pointing it at a configuration and data and it just worked, I’d be more okay with it. The fact that I really don’t want to couple upgrades of MySQL to distro upgrades is just icing on the cake.