Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

Question

I am getting the following error when I try to connect to mysql:

Can\'t connect to local MySQL server through socket \'/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock\' (2)<

Answer 1

If you are on a recent RHEL, you may need to start mariadb (an open source mysql db) instead of the mysql db:

yum remove mysql
yum -y install mariadb-server mariadb
service mariadb start

You should then be able to access mysql in the usual fashion:

mysql -u root -p