error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' — Missing /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

Question

My problem started off with me not being able to log in as root any more on my mysql install. I was attempting to run mysql without passwords turned on... but whenever I

Answer 1

I just had this problem on Ubuntu 14.10

Turns that mysql-server was no longer installed (somehow it had been removed) but I couldn't just install it because there were some broken packages and dependency issues/conflicts.

In the end I had to reinstall mysql

sudo apt-get remove mysql-client
sudo apt-get install mysql-server