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

In my case, It seems like I wasnt really able to kill the mysql process, when I run

sudo service mysql stop
ps -ef | grep mysql

The mysql process was always there, it looks like it was blocking the socket file and new mysql process wasnt able to create it itself.

so this helped

cd /var/run
sudo cp mysqld/ mysqld.bc -rf
sudo chown mysql:mysql mysqld.bc/
sudo service mysql stop
sudo cp mysqld.bc/ mysqld -rf
sudo chown mysql:mysql mysqld -R
sudo /usr/sbin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking &

Now Im able to log in database using

mysql -u root

Then to update root password:

UPDATE user SET authentication_string=password('YOURPASSWORDHERE') WHERE user='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

PS: I had trouble updating root passwod, seems like problem with "auth_socket" plugin, so I had to create new user with full privileges

insert into user set `Host` = "localhost", `User` = "super", `plugin` = "mysql_native_password", `authentication_string` = NULL, `password_expired` = "N", `password_lifetime` = NULL, `account_locked` = "N", `Select_priv` = "Y",
`Insert_priv` = "Y", `Update_priv` = "Y", `Delete_priv` = "Y", `Create_priv` = "Y", `Drop_priv` = "Y", `Reload_priv` = "Y", `Shutdown_priv` = "Y", `Process_priv` = "Y", `File_priv` = "Y",
`Grant_priv` = "Y",  `References_priv` = "Y", `Index_priv` = "Y", `Alter_priv` = "Y", `Show_db_priv` = "Y", `Super_priv` = "Y", `Create_tmp_table_priv` = "Y", `Lock_tables_priv` = "Y",
`Execute_priv` = "Y", `Repl_slave_priv` = "Y",  `Repl_client_priv` = "Y",  `Create_view_priv` = "Y", `Show_view_priv` = "Y", `Create_routine_priv` = "Y", `Alter_routine_priv` = "Y",
`Create_user_priv` = "Y",  `Event_priv` = "Y", `Trigger_priv` = "Y", `Create_tablespace_priv` = "Y";

This creates user "super" with no password and then you can connect with mysql -u super