I have just installed MySQL 4.0 and I can't get the service running. Here's what's happening: I can't connect to mysql because it's not running, I can't start it because mysqld_safe is running and I can't stop mysql_safe. I can't even seem to kill it.

[root@linux init.d]# mysqladmin -u root password treefrog
mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed
error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)'
Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' exists!

[root@linux init.d]# mysqld start
040123 13:11:49 Can't start server: Bind on TCP/IP port: Address already in use
040123 13:11:49 Do you already have another mysqld server running on port: 3306 ?
040123 13:11:49 Aborting

040123 13:11:49 mysqld: Shutdown Complete

[root@linux init.d]# ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
3992 pts/2 00:00:00 su
3993 pts/2 00:00:00 bash
4354 pts/2 00:00:00 mysqld_safe
4580 pts/2 00:00:00 ps
[root@linux init.d]# mysqld_safe stop
Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/var
040123 13:12:14 mysqld ended

[root@linux init.d]# ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
3992 pts/2 00:00:00 su
3993 pts/2 00:00:00 bash
4354 pts/2 00:00:00 mysqld_safe
4615 pts/2 00:00:00 ps
[root@linux init.d]#

do an "updatedb" as root, then "locate mysql.sock" and then make a link from that file to where it should be (i.e. var/lib/whatever). this happened to me before and it turned out that mysql.sock was in some random tmp folder and even if i tried to move it nothing happened. so when i made the link it all worked out fine. maybe i'm not answering the question, but i dunno.

I've also had this show up. Don't know what I am doing in mysql, and didn't know how to shut off mysql. Ended up restarting the computer (didn't add mysql to the startup scripts yet). Restarted mysql manually and didn't have any problems. My .sock file was in /tmp, but that is where it was looking for it.