This MySQL or variant installation has entered "frozen mode". Maintainer scripts will avoid making changes or starting the daemon until manually released from this state. See /usr/share/doc/mysql-common/README for general information about this mode. In this particular case, an incompatible downgrade attempt has been detected. This can be resolved in one of two ways: 1. Change the contents of /var/lib/mysql/ to contain database data that is compatible with the currently installed MySQL or variant daemon version. For example: you could restore from a backup. Alternatively you could do a dump using a future version binary and then a restore using the current version binary. 2. Switch to a MySQL or variant daemon version that is compatible with the data currently in /var/lib/mysql/. For example, if you have attempted a downgrade from mysql-server-5.7 to mysql-server-5.6, you could "apt install mysql-server-5.7" again. Please resolve this situation and only then remove the /etc/mysql/FROZEN symlink. You can then run "dpkg-reconfigure " where should usually be in the form -server-.