Can't connect to MySql from PHP

Ok, so the solution was to rebuild the droplet with clean Ubuntu 14.04 and install LAMP by myself. Now everything works like a charm.

Thanks for your answer. I created new user by the digitalocean tutorial https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-new-user-and-grant-permissions-in-mysql which is variation of what you wrote.

The funny thing is that I can log in with this user (root as well) and see the database via command line (secret variables are in {…}):

**{user}@{host}:~# mysql -u{username} -p{password}**
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 82
Server version: 5.5.38-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 (Ubuntu)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

**mysql> show databases;**
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| {database}          |
+--------------------+
2 rows in set (0.02 sec)

But when I want to connect with the same access information on the same server:

host: localhost username: {username} password: {password} database: {database}

I get “Database access denied!” :(