MySQL service not starting

December 15, 2013 6.4k views
quifflet
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quifflet
One of my droplets is reporting that it cannot connect to the MySQL server. I've tried rebooting the droplet a couple of times but it hasn't made any difference. If I try connecting to the database via SSH get the following error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) The droplet is running LAMP on Ubuntu 12.04, and is running a single website (MediaWiki). It's been fine since I set it up a couple of months ago. I haven't made any changes to the MediaWiki codebase or to the MySQL database itself since I set it up (apart from adding content to the wiki), so I don't really understand why it's suddenly stopped working now. Any ideas where to start? Where should I be looking re: log files etc?
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2 Answers
stevelack December 15, 2013
I had this exact same issue last week. I spent the entire day reinstalling MySql, restarting apache, checking the error logs, upgrading the droplet to a bigger one, posting questions here, contacting DO support and googling the error, but nothing helped.

I finally just created a snapshot of the droplet and started a new droplet form the snapshot image, then changed the DNS entry for the effected sites to the new droplet and everything worked again. I never did find out why it stopped but it hasn't been a problem since.

Try taking a snapshot of your droplet and creating a new droplet from that image. That won't tell you what happened but it may get you up and running more quickly.
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pablo December 15, 2013
Have you been updating the software packages on your droplet, regularly? If not, execute: 
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade && sudo apt-get -y autoremove
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