service mysql start hangs forever without any messages if the configuration is broken

I had a typo in the configuration file, and when doing service mysql restart, the command hanged forever, without any messages at all. I guess is related to be moved to upstart and the respawn option, in combination with no printing any error messages at all.

To debug the problem I had to run mysqld manually to get the errors in the console, I didn't even saw any errors in /var/log/mysql.err. Just now I realized there is another log file in /var/log/mysql/error.log, and I can see the errors there, but that's a little confusing.

Anyway, I think the init script shouldn't try to restart the program if it failed too soon, and probably should print startup errors in the console. A simple solution might be to just remove the respawn option for now.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: mysql-server 5.1.58-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-16.28-generic 3.0.17
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Feb 14 13:07:31 2012
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: mysql-5.1
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-20 (117 days ago)