This is posted for those of us that use Slackware from time to time.
Take a deep breath…no wait. Take 5 deep ones.
Think happy thoughts.
Try the folowing:
su mysql
mysql_install_db
It could also be that your mysql libs are not ‘owned’ by your mysql user or that your mysql.sock file isn’t linked correctly. To correc this, try the following via shell
su root
ln -s /var/run/mysql/mysql.sock /tmp/mysql.sock
chown mysql /var/lib/mysql/*
chown mysql /var/lib/mysql/mysql/*
Now start mysql like this:
/etc/init.d/mysql start
If you can’t start it, change the file to start automatically during bootup and restart
chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld
shutdown now
reboot