mysql error : ERROR 1018 (HY000): Can’t read dir of ‘.’ (errno: 13)

You need to set ownership and permissions for directory: chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/  #your mysql user may have different name chmod -R 755 /var/lib/mysql/ Note: -R makes commands recursive – you may omit it, if there is no subdirs in /var/lib/mysql/.