I spent way too long trying to fix this and search the cpanel forums, tried just about every possible method and nothing worked.

i followed this and reinstalled mysql
devside.net/web/server/linux/mysql

Restarted in WHM and still get the same error:


/usr/bin/mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)' Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/tmp/mysql.sock' exists! mysql has failed, please contact the sysadmin (result was "Warning, no valid mysql.sock file found.mysql has failed").

Nothing wants to work

root [/]# cd /var/lib/mysql
root [/var/lib/mysql]# chmod 771 *
root [/var/lib/mysql]# chmod 777 mysql.sock
chmod: failed to get attributes of `mysql.sock': No such file or directory
root [/var/lib/mysql]# chmod 660 <hostname>.pid
chmod: failed to get attributes of `server.myactualhostname.pid': No such file or directory

I've tried everything and I can't believe nothing is working

I rebooted the server as well and retried so many methods. I reset MySQL password and no luck. I don't know what else to do honestly.

I'm on a cPanel server

Did you verify (via ps) that mysqld is actually running? If not, what does the .err log file say (I think it's in /var/lib/mysql/var/<hostname>.err or maybe just /var/lib/mysql/<hostname>.err -- not sure on default configs)?