title: Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist
body: <p>I am on a server that has  afresh install on RHEL 5.  I was able to install Apache and PHP just fine., but I am having serious trouble with my MySQL installation.  I tried the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>yum install mysql-server mysql 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And didn't get any errors or conflicts.  Then I tried to start mysql with the following commands:</p>
  
  <pre><code>chkconfig --levels 235 mysqld on
  service mysqld start
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And get <code>Timeout error occurred trying to start MySQL Daemon.</code>  </p>
  
  <p>I checked my logs and see this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>[ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.host' doesn't exist
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm not sure where to go from here.</p>
  
  <p>For reference I am using RHEL 5 and installed the latest versions of PHP 5 and Apache.</p>