Hello Poldi and thanks for this bug report. It seems that mysqld can't notify systemd it started because it can't connect to the notification socket:
2020-12-23T00:42:48.986520Z 0 [Warning] [MY-011807] [Server] Failed to connect to systemd notification socket named /run/systemd/notify. Error: 'Permission denied' The AppArmor profile shipped with mysql-server-8.0 has a specific rule to allow mysqld to connect to /run/systemd/notify: # Allow systemd notify messages /{,var/}run/systemd/notify w, however this is missing from the AppArmor profile attached to this bug report. The bug description shows that the profile has been manually modified: modified.conffile..etc.apparmor.d.usr.sbin.mysqld: [modified] mtime.conffile..etc.apparmor.d.usr.sbin.mysqld: 2017-01-30T16:55:00.692188 This is the root of the problem. Purging mysql-server-8.0 (apt purge) and reinstalling it should reinstall the correct AppArmor profile (careful with your existing databases!). I'm setting this bug report to Incomplete for the moment. If you agree this is a local configuration issue rather than a bug please set its status to Invalid. If you still believe this is a bug in Ubuntu please follow-up with you reasoning and set the bug status back to New, we'll look at it again. Thanks! ** Changed in: mysql-8.0 (Ubuntu) Status: New => Incomplete -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1909043 Title: cannot upgrade mysql server package To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mysql-8.0/+bug/1909043/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs