Quote Originally Posted by sbb
All I want to do is backup (mysqldump) a couple of databases and move them over to a new host.
There are many ways of doing this:

a. The most obvious one is to copy the files from one server to the other
b. If you still want to do a mysqlump, there is a command line option to set the configuration file to use. In that configuratio file you can specify where the data files are
c. Make sure that the mysql.socket file is pointing to a rw location (that might have been your problem when it didn't start).
d. Start the MySQL server in 'console' mode.

Most of the time you should use a mysqld_safe script that does some housekeeping for you just in case. You can check all these options by using mysqld --help, the text will be version specific.

Check http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Up...g-to-arch.html for some information in how copy databases between servers.
Check http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Starting_server.html as a starting point to troubleshooting.

The mysql versions might be too different.
The datafiles are backward and forward compatible, check

--GN