Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/mysql/mysql.sock' (38)

Question

I am having a big problem trying to connect to mysql. When I run:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql start

I have the following error :

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Answer 1

If you are using AWS (Amazon Web Services) Micro version, then it is a memory issue. When I ran

mysql

from the terminal it would say

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111)

So I tried the following and it would just fail.

service mysqld restart

After much searching, I found out that you have to create a swap file for MySQL to have enough memory. Instructions are listed: http://www.prowebdev.us/2012/05/amazon-ec2-linux-micro-swap-space.html.

Then, I was able to restart mysqld.