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Can’t connect to local MySQL server error with MariaDB and Homebrew

An old fashioned, wooden card catalog that libraries used to store information about books and periodicals in their collection. A paper database, if you will.

Photo by Jan Antonin Kolar on Unsplash

I encountetered this error message with MariaDB installed using Homebrew. 

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’ (2)

I had previously installed a version of MySQL. Apparently that was the cause. One tell-tale sign that you may be having a similar problem is if you receive a Homebrew Caveat about a /etc/my.cnf file after installing MariaDB. Even though I'd uninstalled MySQL, there were still some files hanging around and causing trouble.

I ran a bunch of commands in order to resolve the error. Hopefully this works for you too.

  1. Use brew uninstall mariadb to remove the latest-installed version.
  2. Use brew uninstall mysql to remove MySQL just in case.
  3. Run rm -rf /opt/homebrew/var/mysql
  4. Run rf -rm /opt/homebrew/Cellar/mariadb/ to remove all existing references to MariaDB. (If you see a mysql directory in /opt/homebrew/Cellar/ delete that too.)
  5. Run rm -rf /opt/homebrew/etc/my.cn* to delete existing configuration files.
  6. Run brew cleanup --prune=all to clear Homebrew's caches and clean up symlinks.
  7. Run brew install mariadb to reinstall MariaDB.
  8. Run brew postinstall mariadb.

As Homebrew instructs you after installing: use brew services start mariadb and brew services stop mariadb to start and stop the server. Then use mariadb to connect to the server from a terminal window.