[GRASS-user] MySQL mysql.sock GRASS connection problem

[Mark Ruddy]

Dear GRASS list,

I am having problems connecting to a local MySQL db from GRASS.

using the following commands i get the error below...

 > db.connect driver=mysql database=dbname
 > db.login user=user pass=password
 > db.tables -p
DBMI-MySQL driver error:
Cannot connect to MySQL: Can't connect to local MySQL server through  
socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

A far as I was aware this is general error to do with some  
installations of MySQL placing mysql.sock somewhere else other than / 
tmp. I encountered this before when trying to connect another MySQL  
client (R) and easily solved the problem by editing the /etc/my.cnf  
file to contain the true [client]  location of mysql.sock. GRASS  
seems to be ignoring the /etc/my.cnf file though and seems to be  
still trying to locate mysql.sock in /tmp. All my other MySQL clients  
don't have a socket problem. Does GRASS take its MySQL global configs  
from some other location? Is something else wrong? Any help would be  
greatly appreciated.

I'm running GRASS 6.2.1 courtesy of OpenOSX on Mac OSX 10.4.11 with  
MySQL 5.0.19.

Best wishes,

Mark