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

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 :

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

I do have mysql.sock under the /var/mysql directory.

In /etc/my.cnf I have:

[client]
port=3306
socket=/var/mysql/mysql.sock

[mysqld]
port=3306
socket=/var/mysql/mysql.sock
key_buffer_size=16M

max_allowed_packet=8M

and in /etc/php.ini I have :

; Default socket name for local MySQL connects.  If empty, uses the built-in
; MySQL defaults.
mysql.default_socket = /var/mysql/mysql.sock

I have restarted apache using sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

But I still have the error.

Otherwise, I don't know if that's relevant but when I do mysql_config --sockets I get

--socket         [/tmp/mysql.sock]

Answer

If your file my.cnf (usually in the /etc/mysql/ folder) is correctly configured with

socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

you can check if mysql is running with the following command:

mysqladmin -u root -p status

try changing your permission to mysql folder. If you are working locally, you can try:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/lib/mysql/

that solved it for me