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

Question

I installed MySQL on Mac OS X Mountain Lion with homebrew install mysql, but when I tried mysql -u root I got the following error:

Answer 1

I would recommend you to run

  mysql.server start

before going to

  mysql -u root -p

so as to make sure that the mysql server is running before trying to login into it

This happens many times what you start/restart a machine where by no mysql server is running.