I wanted to write this down so I didn’t forget about it in case I had to do it again for any reason. I also had a couple friends ask me to help them. It’s extremely easy to fix it, but it did take me a while to find out what exactly was wrong and where to get the new files.

  1. The MySQL.prefPane for OS X 10.5 is wrong.
  2. MySQLCOM is in the wrong directory.

To fix this:

  1. First download the appropriate version of OS X you need: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
  2. Install it.
  3. You will then need to download the fix here: ftp://ftp.mysql.com/pub/mysql/download/gui-tools/MySQL.prefPane-leopardfix.zip
  4. Install the new pane. It won’t work yet!
  5. Execute this command in terminal: sudo mv /usr/local/MySQLCOM /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
  6. Go back to the MySQL preference pane and start the MySQL server. Voila!

This bug is documented here: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=25008