ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

Question

I installed LAMP on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) and then set root password on phpMyAdmin. I forgot the password and now I am unable to login. When I try to change password through terminal I get:

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

How can I fix this? I am unable to open LAMP, uninstall it or reinstall it.

Answer 1

I once had this problem and solved it by installing mysql-server, so make sure that you have installed the mysql-server, not the mysql-client or something else.

That error means the file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock doesn't exists, if you didn't install mysql-server, then the file would not exist. So in that case, install it with

sudo apt-get install mysql-server 

But if the mysql-server is already installed and is running, then you need to check the config files.

The config files are:

/etc/my.cnf /etc/mysql/my.cnf /var/lib/mysql/my.cnf 

In /etc/my.cnf, the socket file config may be /tmp/mysql.sock and in /etc/mysql/my.cnf the socket file config may be /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock. So, remove or rename /etc/mysql/my.cnf, let mysql use /etc/my.cnf, then the problem may solved.