RPMs have a tendency of putting stuff in unorthodox places etc. I've given up using them at all.
I would recommend installing MySQL from source. First, create a new user called mysql (or whatever), with a homedir but without login permissions (do not set a password). Then, install MySQL from source, the source package from http://www.mysql.com has instructions. In the first phase (./configure), define the MySQL user and also set the socket's location to the user's homedir. Do the rest of the installation as instructed.
If you don't feel confident installing from source, try these:
- check that mysqld is running: ps -ef | grep mysqld
- check that /tmp/mysql.sock exists and also write note it's ownership and file permissions: ls -al /tmp/mysql.sock
- check that you can log in locally: mysql -u username -p
- can't? try: find /tmp -name ".sock", and: find /var -name ".sock"
- if you found the socket file, try: mysql -u username -p -S /path/to/socket
Also, from the help page of mysqld:
"Default options are read from the following files in the given order:
/etc/my.cnf /var/db/mysql/my.cnf ~/.my.cnf "
You might want to check those files out.
-jani
