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Ruby ActiveRecord Basics Migrations and Relationships Migrations

Posted by Christopher Sumpter
Christopher Sumpter
18,007 Points

'mysql' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

I am using Start Command Prompt with Ruby on Windows 8.1. When I type mysql -uroot, I get the message 'mysql' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Christopher Sumpter
Christopher Sumpter
18,007 Points

Yes, I have MySQL Server 5.6 installed.

3 Answers

Tommy Bregar
Tommy Bregar
10,847 Points

This line is possibly due to a permissions issue:

5616 [ERROR] InnoDB: The system tablespace must be writable!

Try starting your command prompt as Administrator (Start-> Run-> cmd RIGHT CLICK-> Run as Administrator...)

As for this line: 

c:\Users\sumpt_000\biller>mysql -uroot 'mysql' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Be sure that your mysql\bin folder is part of your $PATH variable:

  1. Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced
  2. Click Environment Variables
  3. Under System Variables find PATH and click on it.
  4. In the Edit windows, find the end of the string of paths (each path needs to be separated by a semi-colon ";" so you may need to add that to the end) add the path to your mysql\bin folder to the end paths.
  5. Go back to Desktop
  6. Close any command prompts you may have open Got to do this so the new $PATH variable will load.
  7. Re-open command prompt. Try running mysql -uroot and if the path was set correctly, mysql will now run.

Let us know if this takes care of it!

Christopher Sumpter
Christopher Sumpter
18,007 Points

Yes, I still had to monkey around with it a bit to enter my password, but it finally loaded. Thank you!

Tommy Bregar
Tommy Bregar
10,847 Points

Glad to help :)

Dat Tran
Dat Tran
723 Points

Well done, it works. Really appreciate your help!

Iain Simmons
MOD
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points
Iain Simmons
Iain Simmons
Treehouse Moderator 32,305 Points

I realise this question has been answered, but something else I just discovered with my own Windows installation of MySQL is that some of the folders that are created and added to the PATH variable upon installing MySQL contain an ampersand (&) character, which breaks when passed as a parameter.

You might find that the C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.0\bin directory comes after the one with the ampersand in the PATH variable.

The solution in this case is to escape the ampersand with a caret (^), so it is ^&

e.g.

C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Fabric 1.5.4 ^& MySQL Utilities 1.5.4 1.5\;C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Fabric 1.5.4 ^& MySQL Utilities 1.5.4 1.5\Doctrine extensions for PHP\;C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6\bin
Colin Xu
Colin Xu
4,967 Points

Thanks a bunch, that did the trick for me!

Graeme Campbell
Graeme Campbell
15,594 Points
Graeme Campbell
Graeme Campbell
15,594 Points

Brilliant, Thank you Iain, that solved my problem :D.