Error establishing a database connection

This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at databasename. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

• Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
• Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
• Are you sure that the database server is running?

If you’re unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.

You are not alone, this happens to everyone.  If you do some searching on this you will find that pretty much no one has an answer for what is wrong.  People running MySQL server locally already know the trick necessary to fix this problem but if you are running MySQL remotely, as I am, then you can be easily mislead into thinking that the fix does not apply to you, but it does.

The issue here, surprisingly, is that SELinux is enabled on the web server and is keeping the MySQL library from communicating with the MySQL server whether local or remote.  Simply set SELinux to Permissive rather than Enforcing and voila, you should be working well.

The command to set SELinux to Permissive mode is:

setenforce 0

You can verify that the mode has changed correctly with:

getenforce

It is important to note that this SELinux issue (bug, I am told) does NOT affect the MySQL client but does affect PHP.  So if you are testing your database connection with “mysql” and it works but WordPress throws the error than you are a prime candidate for this problem.

Also, be sure that PHP has the MySQL module installed:

yum install php-mysql

I have seen this issue on several versions of all of the software components but specifically just dealt with it in CentOS 5.2 with PHP 5.1.6 and WordPress 2.7.1.

Supposedly, the hot new feature of the 2.6 series is that it tracks revisions!  I am looking forward to seeing how this works in action.

It was a perfect morning today. Cold and rainy. I had a sesame seed bagel from Airlie and I walked outside in the rain in my black trench coat and Callaway baseball cap. It wasn’t a heavy rain but just enough to bring out the grim, urban look that I like so much. Walking down Commerce with the autumn leaves strewn about in dirty puddles and the half-barren trees shielding only the slightly bit of rain – this is how I love the city.

Work was work. Nothing special. Dominica had a crappy day – finding out that when she was hired they had lied to her about where she was going to be working. They had hired her to work at the same location that she had been working at for the last several months but they claimed that they needed her to temporarily work further away from home. She put up with it because it was only temporary but today she found out that that was not the case and that there were no plans to move her back to the site that she had been hired for. That is in addition to the lack of mobility within the company for female employees.

Ah the perils of working for big businesses.

I ended up working a long day and was quite tired by the time that I headed for home.  Dominica didn’t feel like going out tonight so we ordered in some Italian from Nino’s.  We watched some Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century and pretty much just went to bed.  It was a quiet night.

I looked at my Java class and it would appear that there is no more homework being assigned and I am pretty sure that my final exam is going to be made available this weekend on Saturday which would be awesome because it would mean that I will have plenty of time to complete it and even relax for a couple of days before flying off to Europe next weekend.

Dominica put in a ton of work getting hotel reservations today.  We are staying at the Holiday Inn Express in Belfast.  We have a room for London at the Sleep Inn for our main big of time there.  And a night at the Comfort Inn at Heathrow for our last night before flying home.  For our opening weekend in the country we had hoped to be able to stay out in the Cotswolds but we were unable to find a place to stay there so our current plan is to stay in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire which is, unfortunately, a major tourist destination getting three million tourists a year but that is also why we were able to find a hotel.

Now if the dollar can just make a bit of a comeback we might be able to afford the trip…