I've installed MySQL on my Mac running lion using their DMG installer. This has created 2 folders, mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64 and mysql-5.5.9-osx10.6-x86_64 with a symlink from /usr/local/mysql/ leading to the newer one. My databases are still in the old folder, in the data folder.
Is it OK to just delete the new data folder, then move the old data folder into the newly installed folder (/usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64) using this:
sudo mv /usr/local/mysql-5.5.9-osx10.6-x86_64/data /usr/local/mysql-5.5.15-osx10.6-x86_64/data
Are there any gotchas I need to worry about? Is it smarter to just change this in the configuration file?
You should look at your my.cnf file to see which folder it is pointing to as the datadir. If you delete the folder it's pointing to, it won't know where to find your data. You can change this value to point to where ever you want your data stored.