So, I am in the process of installing courier/squirrelmail and so I installed mysql. I'm running a Debian 5.0 server.

At startup I get the message:
Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed!


I checked /var/log/syslog and it tells me this:
Apr 9 16:30:08 mail authdaemond: failed to connect to mysql server (server=localhost, userid=mailad
min): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

Any ideas?

Are you root?

This is during the boot process. And I always sudo when attempting to restart the service.

Anything in /var/log/mysql.log or /var/log/mysql.err?

What about /var/log/syslog?

/var/log/syslog;

mail /var/log: sudo tail syslog
Apr  9 22:21:17 mail mysqld[2139]: 090409 22:21:17  InnoDB: Starting shutdown...
Apr  9 22:21:19 mail mysqld[2139]: 090409 22:21:19  InnoDB: Shutdown completed; log sequence number 0 43655
Apr  9 22:21:19 mail mysqld[2139]: 090409 22:21:19 [Note] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete
Apr  9 22:21:19 mail mysqld[2139]: 
Apr  9 22:21:19 mail mysqld_safe[2170]: ended
Apr  9 22:21:31 mail /etc/init.d/mysql[2300]: 0 processes alive and '/usr/bin/mysqladmin --defaults-file=/etc/mysql/debian.cnf ping' resulted in
Apr  9 22:21:31 mail /etc/init.d/mysql[2300]: #007/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
Apr  9 22:21:31 mail /etc/init.d/mysql[2300]: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)'
Apr  9 22:21:31 mail /etc/init.d/mysql[2300]: Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!
Apr  9 22:21:31 mail /etc/init.d/mysql[2300]: 

Nothing in mysql.log or mysql.err

Try running mysqld from the command line. It might have more debugging output.

Also, did you make any changes to mysql since installing? The default debian package should just run.

I didn't know I could run it from something other than the command line when using a server...

The output is what I've posted.

I was tinkering with /etc/hosts

Not saying thats the last change I made(busy day) but its what I remember most recently.

I suspect he meant in contrast to rebooting the server.

It sounds like you have two problems: 1) mailadmin (courier?) can't connect to mysql, and 2) mysqld isn't starting.

Which packages did you install for mysql ? Presumably, you installed both the client and server packages ?

That's a good summary of the problems at the moment.

Here is my most recent command:

sudo aptitude install postfix postfix-mysql mysql-server postfix-tls libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules libsasl2-modules-sql sasl2-bin libpam-mysql openssl telnet mailx

1) apt-cache policy mysql-client ?
2) double check /etc/hosts...

mysql-client:
  Installed: 5.0.51a-24
  Candidate: 5.0.51a-24
  Version table:
 *** 5.0.51a-24 0
        500 http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu lenny/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

/etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain         localhost
192.168.0.100 mail.mydomain.com

Do you still get this when (re)starting via sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart, while tailing /var/log/syslog ?

If there is a chance you might have modified any of the mysql config files, it might be worth reinstalling mysql-client and mysql-server with --purge.

Funny enough...when I try to --purge remove mysql-server/client it reinstalls mysql and prompts me for a password...