Force wordpress to connect to database over TCP

Question

I am trying to connect wordpress running on my machine to a remote mysql database which is tunneled on my machine(localhost). The database connection works by giving following parameters to mysql CLI client

$ mysql --protocol=TCP -P 10000 -h localhost -u username -p'password' db_name

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mysql> show databases;
+-----------------------------------+
| Database                          |
+-----------------------------------+
| information_schema                |
| db_name                           |
+-----------------------------------+
2 rows in set (1.38 sec)

In wp-config.php file of wordpress, I have tried the following values:

define('DB_NAME', 'db_name');
define('DB_USER', 'username');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
define('DB_PORT', 10000);

this doesn't work & throws the following error:

Warning: include(/home/gaurish/Dropbox/code/projects/blog/wp-content/advanced-cache.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/gaurish/Dropbox/code/projects/blog/wp-settings.php on line 62 
Warning: include(): Failed opening '/home/gaurish/Dropbox/code/projects/blog/wp-content/advanced-cache.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/share/php:/usr/share/pear') in /home/gaurish/Dropbox/code/projects/blog/wp-settings.php on line 62 
Warning: mysql_connect(): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) in /home/gaurish/Dropbox/code/projects/blog/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1038

the last line in the above error(Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket) is gives it away why the connection fails as wordpress is trying to connect through an unix socket.

Now, what parameters I need to set to be able to get wordpress to connect to database way as mysql CLI client?

Answer 1

i was able to connect using the following settings in wp-config.php.

define('DB_NAME', 'db_name');
define('DB_USER', 'username');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1:10000');
define('DB_PORT', 10000);

the database connection was successful :)

Answer 2

Check this out: http://chxo.com/be2/20040511_5667.html

Explains it all very well (didn't see the point re-iterating what it says, this is where i went when i needed to do it).

Answer 3

If you want to connect via TCP instead of the Unix socket, try changing the host from localhost, to 127.0.0.1.

define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1');  // forces TCP