gistfile1.txt

I recently had to install MySQL 5.6 on Ubuntu 12.04 from a .deb package on the MySQL website.  It seems that either the package has been updated recently or nobody uses this method to install so I ended up running into endless problems.  Through trial and error I found the following method works for me.

Install libaio-dev:
  sudo apt-get install libaio-dev

Now install your package(mine was enterprise edition, community may have a different filename):
  sudo dpkg -i mysql-advanced-5.6.10-debian6.0-x86_64.deb

This will install your files to the /opt directory, instead of the more common /etc directory.  No worries, all we need to do is point our system at this new directory.

Run the following commands to set up the mysql user and group if you have never had mysql installed before.  If you had a previous version installed, the user and group are already created.
  sudo groupadd mysql
  sudo useradd -r -g mysql mysql

Move into the mysql directory and make a data directory.
  cd /top/mysql/server-5.6/
  sudo mkdir data
  sudo chown mysql:mysql data

Now we can create and configure the database.

  sudo scripts/mysql_install_db --user=mysql --language=/opt/mysql/server-5.6/share/english/
  sudo cp support-files/my-default.cnf /etc/my.cnf
  sudo cp support-files/mysql.server /etc/init.d/mysql.server
  sudo cp support-files/mysql-log-rotate /etc/logrotate.d/mysql.server

Before we start the server, let's make sure MySQL is only going to be using the one configuration file.

  sudo rm /etc/mysql/my.cnf /opt/mysql/server-5.6/my.cnf

Now let's start MySQL server.

  sudo service mysql.server start

All that's left is to set your PATH so that mysql is accessible from any location.
  echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/mysql/server-5.6/bin' | sudo tee /etc/profile.d/mysql.server.sh

From this point you'll be able to log in to MySQL locally with any username you can think of - or no username at all.
  mysql -u anyusernameintheworld

That's obviously very bad practice.  Let's go ahead and add a password to the root useraccount and then create a username that we'll actually query with.
  mysql
  UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('yournewpassword') WHERE User='root';
  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'newuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'newuserpassword';
  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

And if you'd like the new user to be able to connect from outside host machines.
  GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'newuser'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'newuserpassword';
  FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Please note that you can(and should) change % to be an IP address that you are connecting from.  The % is a wildcare operator, so if you'd like everyone on your local network to connect you could use something like 192.168.%.