First of all can I just say that I really really love the Internet community for all that it does in providing answers to everybody. I don't post a lot but everybody's posting here and on so many boards helped me so much! None of them gave me the right answer mind you, but here is my unique solution to this nightmare of a spending 2 solid days trying to install MySQL 5.5.9 on Snow Leopard 10.6. Skip to bottom for resolution.
Here's what happened.
I had a server crash recently. The server was rebuilt and of course MySQL 5.5.8 didn't work. What a worthless piece. I had 5.1.54 on my other machine. That had been a pain to install as well but not like this.
I had all sorts of issues installing with the dmg from mysql.org, installing mysql5 using macports, uninstalling trying to revert to 5.1.54 (couldn't because I couldn't find the receipt file with that info even though I followed the directions). After rming everything I could find related to mysql and then reinstalling 5.5.8 everything worked! Until I rebooted... ☹ I looked in my system preference mysql pane and found mysql server wasn't starting. (skip to end for resolution)
My first error (super common) included:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysql.sock'
and numerous other EXTREMELY common issues related to mysql.sock
http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?11,9689,13272
Here were things I tried:
1)Create /etc/my.cnf file with the proper paths to mysql.sock. I even tried modifying mysql.server with vi directly. Modifying the php.ini was worthless. Nothing worked because MySQL wasn't starting, therefore it wasn't creating mysql.sock in the first place. Maybe you can point to the directory it is being created, and not the actual full file path i.e. not /tmp/mysql.sock but /tmp It was suggested but wasn't working because there was no mysql.sock because mysqld wasn't spawning.
2)Basedir and datadir modifications didn't work because there was no mysql.sock to point too.
Why? Because the mysql daemon wasn't starting. Without anything to start mysqld and thereby create mysql.sock I was doomed. They are an important part of the solution but if you try them and still get errors, you will know why.
3)sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/
didn't solve my problem. I ended up having that folder and all items set to root:wheel though in the end, because it was one of the many things recommended and its working. Maybe it could remain _mysql but wheel works.
4)Copy mysql.sock from another machine. Doesn't work. I had searched and searched my new machine and couldn't find mysql.sock. I was using find / | grep mysql.sock because locate mysql wasn't finding anything. Besides I was trying so many different things it wasn't updating enough to find my new installs. I now like find much more than locate, even though you can update the locate db.
Anyhow you can't copy mysql.sock, even if you tar it because its a 0 byte file.
THE RESOLUTION: I finally stumbled onto the solution. I finally just typed mysqld from command line while I was in the proper bin directory. It said another process was running. _mysql was spawning a process that I could see in the Activity Monitor. I killed the active mysql process and when I typed mysqld again I found it was creating my mysql.sock file in the /private/tmp/mysql.sock
The mysql pref pane wouldn't start the right process on login, so I just disabled that for being worthless. It wouldn't start mysql because no mysql.sock was being created.
By then I had figured out that mysqld creates mysql.sock. I then found /opt/local/mysql/ and typed "open bin" in the terminal window. This opened the directory with mysqld in it.
I went to login items in the system preferences in my account settings and dragged and dropped the mysqld file onto the startup items there. THAT worked. Finally!
It works flawlessly because mysqld is starting up at login, which means mysql.sock is being created so no more errors about not being able to find mysql.sock.
