Cant connect to local mysql server through socket /run/mysqld/mysqld.sock (2)

My problem started off with me not being able to log in as root any more on my mysql install. I was attempting to run mysql without passwords turned on... but whenever I ran the command

I would never get the prompt back. I was trying to follow these instructions to recover the password.

The screen just looks like this:

and I don't get a prompt to start typing the SQL commands to reset the password.

When I kill it by pressing CTRL + C, I get the following message:

If I retry the command and leave it long enough, I do get the following series of messages:

But then if I try to log in as root by doing:

I get the following error message:

I checked and /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock file doesn't not exist. The folder does, but not the file.

Also, I don't know if this helps or not, but I ran find / -name mysqld and it came up with:

I'm new to Linux and MySQL, so I don't know if this is normal or not. But I'm including this info just in case it helps.

I finally decided to uninstall and reinstall mysql.

After reinstalling all packages again in the same order as above, during the phpmyadmin install, I got the same error:

So I tried again to uninstall/reinstall. This time, after I uninstalled the packages, I also manually renamed all mysql files and directories to mysql.bad in their respective locations.

Then I tried to reinstall mysql-server and mysql-client again. But I've noticed that it doesn't prompt me for a password. Isn't it supposed to ask for an admin password?

After sleepless nights trying to find a solution to this problem, I have finally come to one. Thus, I’ve decided to share it and I know I’ll need it again in the future (It’s not the first time I install MySQL in a recently formatted Windows 10 computer and face this problem).

Note that I’m running Debian in a Linux Subsystem for Windows 10 and I suppose it might work with any subsystem.

Cleaning the Backyard

First of all, let’s start from scratch, you want to make sure you don’t have any remaining MySQL garbage in your system:

After that, check if everything is clean, run the following code, and hope nothing shows up

If that doesn’t do the trick, like in my case I still had some installed…

Try to purge them individually, like so (php is just an innocent amidst the sinful, so leave it be) :

And now, clean everything else

Installing Mysql-server

Now, we can start from scratch and install it. First, we have to download our configuration file using (be sure to get the latest file, mine was 8.15–1. you can find them here http://repo.mysql.com):

Once it is done, install it using:

It will prompt you to choose a MySQL version, take mysql-5.7. I was taken by the greed of choosing 8.0, but it gave me more problems than I had wished for, then humbly get 5.7:

Now, we can properly install mysql-server:

You’ll need to enter a password…make sure you’ll remember it ;)

Secure Mysql Installation

Now, we want to change some default settings that might not be so secure, then run:

Enter root password (I’ve told you to remember it) and…

Here’s when my nightmares started and I stumbled with:

Error: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2)

I noticed then that by default this service is not started, we have to start it, but using sudo service mysql start or sudo service mysqld start won’t start it, neither will sudo systemctl start mysql. They will just give you a bunch of problems, you should:

Now, we can again run:

The settings I’ve used were:

Making Sure Everything is Set

Now, before trying to connect to mysql, make sure we have a root has an authentication string. Enter MySQL Monitor:

And then enter:

Make sure you see something this

Now, if the authentication string is empty, we have to set up a new password for root. Still, in MySQL Monitor, run:

And then reload grant tables:

Now, check if our root user has an authentication_string:

Using MySQL Workbench from Windows 10

I like connecting to the database from Windows itself, and once I have installed workbench in Windows (https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/workbench/), it opens up without any connections.

Now we have to create a new connection, by clicking in the add button:

Add a name to the connection and leave the other settings as they are:

Now you can simply connect to the database in your Linux Subsystem from Windows.

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