ERROR 1018 (HY000): Can’t read dir of ‘./dbname/’ (errno: 13)

When I run the following command at mysql> I get an error which read as follows:

mysql> use dbname;

mysql> show tables;

ERROR 1018 (HY000): Can’t read dir of ‘./dbname/’ (errno: 13)

Solution to this is to set right permissions

#cd /var/lib/

chown mysql.mysql  mysql -R

This fixed the issue and can run any commands on Mysql now.