ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysql.sock' (2)

Question

I\'m getting this error

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can\'t connect to local MySQL server through socket \'/var/run/mysqld/mysql.sock\' (2)

even though

Answer 1

I have the same problem and tried all the solutions posted here like :

sudo apt-get autoremove mysql-server

but unfortunately it doesn't work for me on ubuntu 16.04. To uninstall the right package you need to :

sudo apt-get remove mysql-

when you tried to autocomplete using tab the command it will list the following package :

mysql-client           mysql-client-core-5.7  mysql-server           mysql-server-core-5.7  mysql-workbench        mythes-en-us           
mysql-client-5.7       mysql-common           mysql-server-5.7       mysql-utilities        mysql-workbench-data   

obviously choose the mysql-server-core-5.7 so it would be :

sudo apt-get remove mysql-server-core-5.7

and now you can uninstall all mysql and reinstall again using these command from johnny's answer :

sudo apt-get remove --purge mysql*
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Now I solved it and the Error is GONE.