WordPress Error establishing a database connection

Question

I am new to WordPress, and I am trying to setup it at my local machine.

I am getting error like "Error establishing a database connection".

I tried all solutions from WP blogs,

• 1. created new user with all privileges
• 2. tired with root user.
• 3. created and deleted the target database multiple times.

Nothing is working.

Does anyone know anything else I can try?

Answer 1

I tried all these suggestions and still couldn't get it to work. However, I had installed MySQL v8.0.12 and noticed that in the 'Users and Privileges' section, under the user I had set up, the 'Authentication Type' for the password was set to some kind of 'sha2' setting.

After trying 100 different things, I eventually fixed this by uninstalling then re-installing MySQL, and during the re-installation, specifically choosing the option button that refers to maintaining compatibility with previous versions of MySQL.

I think this resulted in my passwords not being automatically hashed, which enabled Wordpress to successfully connect to my MySQL database.

Answer 2

Error establishing a database connection doesn't get any simpler than that. Your password, database name, user name, or host is wrong. See http://codex.wordpress.org/Common_WordPress_Errors#Error_Establishing_Database_Connection

Are you sure about using localhost as the server? Are you using MAMP or WAMP?

Try using Adminer http://www.adminer.org/ on your PC/Mac to find the database name, etc., and to admin the database when needed.

If you know can use a shell, try logging into the MySQL server and trying

mysql> show databases;

to list all databases to check your database name.

And try

mysql> mysqlserverinfo --server=root:pass@localhost -d --format=vertical

to get port info, etc. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql-utilities/1.6/en/mysqlserverinfo.html

Answer 3

I used MAMP for the MySQL server, and used its phpMyAdmin interface to create the database for WordPress and specify its user and password.

Host, for the new database, was "%" on the "User" tab of phpMyAdmin, which it said was supposed to allow any value, and did let me get a certain way through the process. But, I ended up going into "Login Information" under the "User" tab in phpMyAdmin, and changing "%" to "localhost".

That allowed me to finish setting up WordPress.

Answer 4

What worked for me:
-I moved the wp-config.php file into another folder
-Refreshed the browser and Wordpress will try to re-install
-choose a language
-A message should say Wordpress is already installed and will take you to the database setup page.
-Enter the same db name, username, password, and host (usually localhost).
-Got to www.yoursite.com/admin and you should be able to log in.

Answer 5

For future readers, if you are on OSX Yosemite (possibly other versions of OSX as well) and get "Error establishing a database connection" with a local WordPress installation, you may need to do the following:

sudo mkdir /var/mysql
sudo chmod 755 /var/mysql
sudo ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock

Yosemite looks in the wrong location for the mysql.sock file, so creating this symlink to the correct location solves the problem.

The reason the missing symlink is a problem for WordPress specifically is because in your wp-config.php file, define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); will not work. An alternative workaround is to change this value in your wp-config file to define('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1');.

The OP didn't say what details they changed in their wp-config file to solve the problem (perhaps it was this DB_HOST parameter) so I just thought I'd post this since I wasted a lot of time trying to figure it out!