the answer is there MySQL can not write to the directory you are pointing inside my.cnf, and it dose not have the right permissions. to fix this problem make sure the user MySQL has owner privileges on the directory that my.cnf is pointing for example lets say the base_dir is located under /MySQL , data_dir is located under /MySQL/data and the socket is located under /tmp in this example you need to make sure /MySQL and /MySQL/data are owned by MySQL user, for /tmp since its a default directory for Linux user MySQL should have read,write and execute privileges. also you need to make sure the partition that contain the data_dir is not full "contain enough free space"

There are five(5) methods you can do

METHOD #1

Don't run restart. Delete the binlogs between shutdown and startup.

Let's say mysql-bin.* is in /var/lib/mysql. Run the following:

cd /var/lib/mysql
service mysql stop
rm -f mysql-bin.*
service mysql start

After startup, login to mysql and run

SHOW MASTER STATUS;

an you should see mysql-bin.000001

METHOD #2

Create a script to execute RESET MASTER; and have it executed

Step 01 : Add this line to my.cnf under the [mysqld] group header

[mysqld]
init-file=/var/lib/mysql/init.sql

Step 02 : Run the following

echo "RESET MASTER;" > /var/lib/mysql/init.sql
chown mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/init.sql

Step 03 : service mysql restart

METHOD #3

Do it by hand. Login to mysql and run

mysql> RESET MASTER;

METHOD #4

Erase binary logs immediately after restart

MYSQL_USER=root
MYSQL_PASS=rootpassword
MYSQL_CONN="-u${MYSQL_USER} -p${MYSQL_PASS}"
service mysql restart
mysql ${MYSQL_CONN} -e"RESET MASTER"

METHOD #5 (Permanent)

Step 01 : Go to my.cnf and comment out the log-bin option

[mysqld]
#log-bin=mysql-bin

or delete the line that says log-bin=mysql-bin

Step 02 : Run the following

cd /var/lib/mysql
service mysql stop
rm -f mysql-bin.*
service mysql start

Step 03 : Login to mysql and run

mysql> SHOW BINARY LOGS;

The output should be

ERROR 1381 (HY000): You are not using binary logging    

GIVE IT A TRY !!!