MySQL connection not working: 2002 No such file or

Question

I'm trying to set up WordPress. I have Apache and MySQL running, and the accounts and database are all set up. I tried to make a simple connection:

<?php
    $conn = mysql_connect('localhost', 'USER', 'PASSWORD');
    if(!$conn) {
        echo 'Error: ' . mysql_errno() . ' - ' . mysql_error();
    }
?>

And I always get this:

Error: 2002 - No such file or directory

What file or directory could it be talking about?

I'm on a OS X Snow Leopard, using the built-in Apache. I installed MySQL using the x86_64 dmg.

UPDATE: I found that the socket is at /tmp/mysql.sock, so In php.ini, I replaced all occurrences of the wrong path with that.

Answer 1

in my case I have problem with mysqli_connect.
when I want to connect
mysqli_connect('localhost', 'myuser','mypassword')
mysqli_connect_error() return me this error "No such file or directory"

this worked for me mysqli_connect('localhost:3306', 'myuser','mypassword')

Answer 2

I'd check your php.ini file and verify the mysql.default_socket is set correctly and also verify that your mysqld is correctly configured with a socket file it can access. Typical default is "/tmp/mysql.sock".

Answer 3

On a Mac, before doing all the hard work, simply check your settings in System Preferences > MySQL. More often than not, I've experienced the team running into this problem since The MySQL Server Instance is stopped.

Click the Start MySQL Server button, and magic will happen.

Answer 4

This is for Mac OS X with the native installation of Apache HTTP and custom installation of MySQL.

The answer is based on @alec-gorge's excellent response, but since I had to google some specific changes to have it configured in my configuration, mostly Mac OS X-specific, I thought I'd add it here for the sake of completeness.

Enable PHP5 support for Apache HTTP

Make sure the PHP5 support is enabled in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

Edit the file with sudo vi /etc/apache2/httpd.conf (enter the password when asked) and uncomment (remove ; from the beginning of) the line to load the php5_module module.

LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Start Apache HTTP with sudo apachectl start (or restart if it's already started and needs to be restarted to re-read the configuration file).

Make sure that /var/log/apache2/error_log contains a line that tells you the php5_module is enabled - you should see PHP/5.3.15 (or similar).

[notice] Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) DAV/2 PHP/5.3.15 with Suhosin-Patch configured -- resuming normal operations

Looking up Socket file's name

When MySQL is up and running (with ./bin/mysqld_safe) there should be debug lines printed out to the console that tell you where you can find the log files. Note the hostname in the file name - localhost in my case - that may be different for your configuration.

The file that comes after Logging to is important. That's where MySQL logs its work.

130309 12:17:59 mysqld_safe Logging to '/Users/jacek/apps/mysql/data/localhost.err'.
130309 12:17:59 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /Users/jacek/apps/mysql/data

Open the localhost.err file (again, yours might be named differently), i.e. tail -1 /Users/jacek/apps/mysql/data/localhost.err to find out the socket file's name - it should be the last line.

$ tail -1 /Users/jacek/apps/mysql/data/localhost.err
Version: '5.5.27'  socket: '/tmp/mysql.sock'  port: 3306  MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Note the socket: part - that's the socket file you should use in php.ini.

There's another way (some say an easier way) to determine the location of the socket's file name by logging in to MySQL and running:

show variables like '%socket%';

Configuring PHP5 with MySQL support - /etc/php.ini

Speaking of php.ini...

In /etc directory there's /etc/php.ini.default file. Copy it to /etc/php.ini.

sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini

Open /etc/php.ini and look for mysql.default_socket.

sudo vi /etc/php.ini

The default of mysql.default_socket is /var/mysql/mysql.sock. You should change it to the value you have noted earlier - it was /tmp/mysql.sock in my case.

Replace the /etc/php.ini file to reflect the socket file's name:

mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock
mysqli.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

Final verification

Restart Apache HTTP.

sudo apachectl restart 

Check the logs if there are no error related to PHP5. No errors means you're done and PHP5 with MySQL should work fine. Congrats!

Answer 5

Expanding on Matthias D's answer here I was able to resolve this 2002 error on both MySQL and MariaDB with exact paths using these commands:

First get the actual path to the MySQL socket:

netstat -ln | grep -o -m 1 '/.*mysql.sock'

Then get the PHP path:

php -r 'echo ini_get("mysql.default_socket") . "\n";'

Using the output of these two commands, link them up:

sudo ln -s /actualpath/mysql.sock /phppath/mysql.sock

If that returns No such file or directory you just need to create the path to the PHP mysql.sock, for example if your path was /var/mysql/mysql.sock you would run:

sudo mkdir -p /var/mysql

Then try the sudo ln command again.

Answer 6

Im using PHP-FPM or multiple php version in my server. On my case i update mysqli value since there is not mysql default socket parameter :

mysqli.default_socket

to :

mysql.default_socket = /path/to/mysql.sock

thanks to @Alec Gorge