error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' -- Missing /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock

<!-- language-all: lang-none --> 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 # mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables & I would never get the prompt back. I was trying to follow [these instructions to recover the password](http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/recover-mysql-root-password.html). The screen just looks like this: root@jj-SFF-PC:/usr/bin# mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables 120816 11:40:53 mysqld_safe Logging to syslog. 120816 11:40:53 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql and I don't get a prompt to start typing the SQL commands to reset the password. When I kill it by pressing <kbd>CTRL</kbd> + <kbd>C</kbd>, I get the following message: error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)' Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists! If I retry the command and leave it long enough, I do get the following series of messages: root@jj-SFF-PC:/run/mysqld# 120816 13:15:02 mysqld_safe Logging to syslog. 120816 13:15:02 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql 120816 13:16:42 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid ended [1]+ Done mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables root@jj-SFF-PC:/run/mysqld# But then if I try to log in as root by doing: # mysql -u root I get the following error message: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) 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: /var/run/mysqld - folder /usr/sbin/mysqld - file /run/mysqld - folder 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.** apt-get remove mysql-server apt-get remove mysql-client apt-get remove mysql-common apt-get remove phpmyadmin After reinstalling all packages again in the same order as above, during the phpmyadmin install, I got the same error: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2) 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. /var/lib/mysql /var/lib/mysql/mysql /var/log/mysql /usr/lib/perl5/DBD/mysql /usr/lib/perl5/auto/DBD/mysql /u...