still problems connecting to MySQL

[Anon]

I start the mysqld daemon with the "safe_mysqld" command. And that goes fine. Then I issue the command "mysqladmin --socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock version" and I get several lines of information. So that looks to be fine too.

But when I run a simple php script with only the line "$link_id = mysql_connect("localhost", "", ""), I get the error message --> Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' <---

I am totally stumped. Is this a PHP problem or a MySQL problem?

[Anon]

Do you see any mysql processes running? ps -ef|grep mysql should give you some output.

What happens when you type mysql at the command prompt? It should run the mysql client.

I always start mysql through the /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql start. It is a prebuilt script with decent status message output. Which distribution are you running?

[Anon]

When I type "mysql" at the command prompt, the client does start up.

I start mysql using "safe_mysql" command.
The version I have which came with RH 7.0 is 3.23.22-beta.

This is so puzzling because it looks like mysql is running properly. I am stumped.

Any ideas?