Why can't I connect to the mysql server?

On the same server an Apache/PHP server is running and it connects without problems!?

var mysql_link = {
    host : 'localhost',
    port : 3308,
    database: 'nodetest',
    user : 'root',
    password : 'xxx'
};

var connection = mysql.createConnection(mysql_link);

connection.connect(function(err){
    console.log(err);
    if(err != null){
        response.write('Error connecting to mysql:' + err+'\n');
    }
});

connection.end();

error

{ [Error: connect ECONNREFUSED]
  code: 'ECONNREFUSED',
  errno: 'ECONNREFUSED',
  syscall: 'connect',
  fatal: true }

update

root@dyntest-amd-6000-8gb /var/www/node/dyntest # ps ax | grep mysqld
 7928 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep mysqld
28942 ?        S      0:00 /bin/sh /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
29800 ?        Sl    17:31 /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld --basedir=/usr/local/mysql --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --plugin-dir=/usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin --user=mysql --log-error=/var/lib/mysql/mysql-error.log --open-files-limit=65535 --pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --port=3306

I know this question has been answered, but for me the problem was that the mysql server listens on a Unix socket not on a tcp socket. So the solution was to add:

port: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'

to the connection options.

If this has worked before, my first guess would be that you've already got a copy of your node.js script running in the background which is holding the connection.

I believe connection refused is a tcp/ip error message, rather than something from MySQL which suggests that it is either not running or is running on another port or with sockets.

Could you try telnet'ing to port 3308? To see if the server is running on that port?

telnet localhost 3308

Can you also try:

mysql -hlocalhost -uroot -pxxx

Overview

For anyone else having this problem and is running mamp. I suspected the problem had to do with the network and not MySQL or Node.js.

Solution

If you open MAMP and click MySQL in the left navigation panel it will pull up the MySQL options page. In the center of the page you will see a checkbox that says,

"Allow network access to MySQL".

Check this box and then restart your MAMP. At this point you can now test your connection to MySQL with telnet or a node.js script.

Hint

Remember you can check which port your MySQL is running on by opening MAMP and clicking the ports link on the left navigation panel.

Visual Aid

For some very odd reason, my computer only allowed me to have port 3306 as default port for my connection in order for it to work.

I wanted to comment my solution here, just in case there were people as newbie as me in databases.

I was getting this error because I had installed the mysql NPM package correctly but I hadn't installed any implementation of MySQL on my computer (I didn't know I had to).

I'm using Arch Linux so, in my case, with the NPM package already installed in my project, I did pacman -Syu mariadb (MariaDB is the default implementation of MySQL in Arch Linux) and then configured it following the guide.

Then, you can use the root user you just configured or create a new one to use in your project. For the latter:

• Enter mysql CLI by running mysql -u root -p.

• Enter the password for root user.

• Create a new database with CREATE DATABASE mydatabase;.

• Create a new user with CREATE USER test IDENTIFIED BY "testpass";.

• Grant privileges to test user to use your new database with GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydatabase.* TO test@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "testpass";. See for more information on this.

And then, in my project, I would have:

let connection = mysql.createConnection({
    host: "localhost",
    user: "test",
    password: "testpass",
    database: "mydatabase"
});