I asked this question on the MySQL forums and got no answer. I asked on StackOverflow and received a recommendation to try on ServerFault. So here I am.

I recently successfully installed the 64 bit version of mysql-5.5.8 on a MacBook Pro in the /usr/local directory.

To address a completely unrelated software (RVM actually) , I chown-ed my /usr/local directory to $USER, Which made MySQL very unhappy. It complained specifically about the /usr/local/mysql/data directory, so I chown-ed that directory to _mysql:wheel.

Everything appears to work again, but it made me wonder if I would have been better off changing the owner of the whole /usr/local/mysql directory, not just the data subdirectory.

Since I neglected to make notes of what owner the default installation runs under before rashly changing the owner of the /usr/local directory, could someone tell me what owner and permissions the /usr/local/mysql directory is by default if you don't inadvertently screw it up? :-/

In terms of permissions I'm guessing rwxr-xr-x would be appropriate (that's what the data directory currently has and it appears to be working fine), but reinforcement for that hunch would be appreciated.

Thanks for any help.

Steve