Mysql with upstart not starting

After an update this morning we are having some strange problems. First of all apt-get upgrade fails during the configuration with the a message that it was unable to start the service. We then attempted dpkg-reconfigure, apt-get purge followed by apt-get install and apt-get install --reinstall, but no luck.

After some time of trying to figure this out we then tried running the mysqld simply as root:

# mysqld --verbose
130809 15:31:15 [Note] Plugin 'FEDERATED' is disabled.
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: The InnoDB memory heap is disabled
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: Mutexes and rw_locks use GCC atomic builtins
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: Compressed tables use zlib 1.2.3.4
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: Initializing buffer pool, size = 128.0M
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: Completed initialization of buffer pool
130809 15:31:15 InnoDB: highest supported file format is Barracuda.
130809 15:31:15  InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start
130809 15:31:16 InnoDB: 5.5.32 started; log sequence number 357746282514
130809 15:31:17 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '0.0.0.0'; port: 3306
130809 15:31:17 [Note]   - '0.0.0.0' resolves to '0.0.0.0';
130809 15:31:17 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '0.0.0.0'.
130809 15:31:17 [Note] Event Scheduler: Loaded 0 events
130809 15:31:17 [Note] mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.5.32-0ubuntu0.12.04.2-log'  socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'  port: 3306  (Ubuntu)

and it just work fine. So while digging through the log files we notived the following:

130809 10:15:37  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
130809 10:15:39  InnoDB: Waiting for 200 pages to be flushed
130809 10:16:02  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 357736350943
130809 10:16:02 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete

/proc/self/fd/9: 1: /proc/self/fd/9: mysqld_get_param: not found
/proc/self/fd/9: 1: /proc/self/fd/9: mysqld_get_param: not found
/proc/self/fd/9: 1: /proc/self/fd/9: mysqld_get_param: not found
/proc/self/fd/9: 1: /proc/self/fd/9: mysqld_get_param: not found

10:15 was the time the upgrade was initiated. Each time we attempt to start the mysql-server using either the init.d script or the service mysql start command it will simply add another line like the last 4 lines.

So while we can run the server in a screen and start it manually each time the server reboots, it is quite annoying. Is there something we can do to fix it?