phpMyAdmin, ‘Error #2002 - The server is not responding’, and OS X 10.4.4

Trying to install phpMyAdmin on a fresh OS X 10.4.4 install this afternoon was an incredible exercise in frustration. No matter what I did I kept getting the dreaded ‘Error 2002 - The server is not responding‘ error. Turns out the the location of mysql.sock has changed in this version of OS X; if you had all this working before upgrading then the OS was smart enough to detect it and create a sym link to the new location. However new installs, not so much.

Worked for me:

Open a terminal, type in

# ls -al /etc/php.ini*

If a php.ini does not exist copy over the default php.ini,

# cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini

Now edit the php.ini

# nano /etc/php.ini (or use your prefered editor)

Find “mysql.default_socket” (you can search using [Ctrl]+[w] in nano)

Enter “/tmp/mysql.sock” after the equals sign.

Don’t forget to save the file ([Ctrl]+[o] [Enter] in nano)

Now restart Apache

# apachectl graceful