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 chan

Answer 1

Make sure you have backups of important databases and then try uninstall MySQL related stuff:

apt-get remove --purge mysql\*

Then install it again:

apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

This worked for me and data was kept.

If PHP MySQL shows errors you might have to reinstall PHP MySQL:

apt-get install php5-fpm php5-mysql