Database Error: Unable to connect to the database: Could not connect to MySQL

[keefrichards]

Keep the post in here because someone else might be able to help while i'm at doctor.
So, you got a joomla up on your server and you've built a site locally and now want to upload the local site into the new joomla?

Do you have FTP application and new servers setup for your site on your ftp client?

http://www.rorymoulton.com

I get the db error with /administrator
I get a 404 error with /index
With /index.html, I get the test page that my host put up when we tried to work through the problem yesterday. (they weren't much help)

Yes, I have an htaccess file on my server.

What the hell have I done? I didn't fill out the confiugration.php correctly, right?

Thanks for the help!

[roryam]

Yes. The ftp server still has my original uploads from when I tried to move everything from my local server. Should I kill all those files and start over?

[keefrichards]

Yes. The ftp server still has my original uploads from when I tried to move everything from my local server. Should I kill all those files and start over?

Well, basically when you overwrite a folder or a file all your doing is replacing old files with new ones. So If you know what files need to be replaced in the new joomla! then it would follow that all you'd have to do is overwrite the files and folders on the new joomla you just set up with the files from your local joomla that you want to publish.

[roryam]

Okay, dumb question number, I've lost count.

Are these my customizations, like my template, extensions, content, etc.? I ftp these files?

[keefrichards]

Yes.
if you've successfully installed/created a joomla website on your local (your) machine. Now you're uploading it to a remote server. On that remote server there is already a sucessfull joomla installation which has been FTPd from you to the server by you as you mentioned previously. But it's not the joomla you wanted to publish. It was an experiment to check your hosting service could support a joomla. We've established that it does and it's all hunky dory. Now we want to put your local joomla (the website you built on your local computer) onto the remote server.

How you do this depends on what you have installed on your local joomla. You would need to overwrite the remote folders with the local ones.

However, I think your problems is going to be resolved by practicing uploading sites. From my point of view, I build the sites live online everytime to avoid these issues. Upload a joomla and edit and modify it live.

[roryam]

Dude, you're awesome! It looks like this should work. Thanks for clarifying everything.

And yes, from now on I will be doing everything on my live site. I didn't realize I'd have such problems making this move. Everything I read made it seem so easy. Obviously, at my meager skill level, it's not so easy.

Got some files to overwrite...

[keefrichards]

Okay, dumb question number, I've lost count.

Are these my customizations, like my template, extensions, content, etc.? I ftp these files?

Also, have you established your domain http://www.mysite.com on your host?
Can you navigate to a host management control panel where you can set these up?
ie: http://www.mysite.com/cpanel?

Yes.
if you've successfully installed/created a joomla website on your local (your) machine. Now you're uploading it to a remote server. On that remote server there is already a sucessfull joomla installation which has been FTPd from you to the server by you as you mentioned previously. But it's not the joomla you wanted to publish. It was an experiment to check your hosting service could support a joomla. We've established that it does and it's all hunky dory. Now we want to put your local joomla (the website you built on your local computer) onto the remote server.

How you do this depends on what you have installed on your local joomla. You would need to overwrite the remote folders with the local ones.

However, I think your problems is going to be resolved by practicing uploading sites. From my point of view, I build the sites live online everytime to avoid these issues. Upload a joomla and edit and modify it live.

Dude, you're awesome! It looks like this should work. Thanks for clarifying everything.

And yes, from now on I will be doing everything on my live site. I didn't realize I'd have such problems making this move. Everything I read made it seem so easy. Obviously, at my meager skill level, it's not so easy.

Got some files to overwrite...

Don't get too excited, you need to sort out a few other things by the look of it. I don't think you've set up your account on your host correctly coz I can't ping it.

Have you established your domain http://www.mysite.com on your host?
Can you navigate to a host management control panel where you can set these up?
ie: http://www.myhostingservice.com (i use webhostmanager or whm)

You need to be able to do these things to enable your joomla on remote server, especially if you want to do the following:

• >>build your site live
  >>secure/protect the site from attacks while you develop it.
  >>to create mysql dbs
  >>access your phpMyAdmin control panel.

If you can't do any of the above your hosting company may provide some help depending on the type of account you have with them.

I have to go now.

I hope I've helped.

Good luck

[ASHCA]

I found the solution to my installation problem in "Beginning Joomla! From Novice to Professional" by Dan Rahmel (a very good reference book on Joomla!) page 113, "At the time of this writing, on Yahoo hosted servers, you need to use mysql instead of localhost for the MySQL address." I called Yahoo for assistance 2 times and they never mentioned the above solution.

[roryam]

Aargh...It looks like joomla didn't successfully install on my remote server like I thought. In my control panel, it's still showing as "installing" with some errors.

My host definitely supports Joomla, so I'll have to figure this out with them and return to overwriting.

Thanks for all your help. I'll let you know how it goes with my host...

[wittylyrics]

"Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL" while installing on my desktop
That's what shows when i hit the ...localhost/joomla. I have tried everything suggestion there-is and still not successful. Could someone please assist me here?
To make it easy, this what appears for database * cdcol (1)
* demo
* information_schema (28)
* mysql (23)
* phpmyadmin (8)
* test
* webauth (1)



Please, someone help. Thanks.

[vjtemplates]

If you properly assign a user with full priviledge to the database then enter it during the installation process, that error should never exist.

[wittylyrics]

Thanks Vj. I was hoping your reply would help me but seriously it doesn't. Am I suppose to delete the above databases then create one? A little detail would help people as i'm not very very proficient with this.

[budilaks]

sirs,

at last i can upload into live server at Yahoo Webhosting,

the problem is only a litle thing.

when at connection to mysql,

then :
database type : mysql
hostname : MySql
(this is that we do not think off, ussually the name is localhost or website address)
username : mysqlusername
(don't put @website or @localhost, after mysqlusername)
password : mysqlpassword
database : virtuemart

the database, should be created first, before. using phpMyAdmin panel

cheers,
budilaks

[Flash Gordon]

Hi for the record I got the message below Today
Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL

I am using the wamp localhost/joomla/ administrator on my computer..... I tried loading the wamp again which did not help or solve the problem



But I did do a restore on my computer,,,,, and bingo it solved the problem

PS: Also I did download "quicktime" earlier in the day whether that had any bearing on this prob I will never Know

[jkooky]

I'm having the same problem. Where do I find configuration.php?

[pe7er]

I'm having the same problem. Where do I find configuration.php?

It's in the root of your Joomla site which is in the public directory on your server.
The public directory is probably something like /public_html/ or /htdocs/

[rana1858]

i'm really sorry for directly posting the link, the full solution is this..........

Post successful installation


This problem is normally a permissions issue... or after ur Mysql webhost server refuses connection due to max_user_connections to the database


Debugging:

Open the config file i.e (config.php) of your root joomla site and check if u have given the correcr user name n password n also the database name.......
its always better to give the proper IP of your host.

If every thing is correct then

The problem is due to max_user_connection....... resulting from unclosed connections from one of the elements

Solution:

create a new database user to the same database

then use this new user in the Joomla Config file..

that will solve the problem.

[removed self promotion]

[rana1858]

I'm having the same problem. Where do I find configuration.php?

it's in your Joomla Folder

lets say u type http://www.~~~~~~~~~/joomla to open ur site on IE/Firefox

then open it from your ftp browser as ~~~~~~~~~~~~~/joomla here (~) being the ip of your server and the following folders

n in that folder 'Joomla' Voila it will be there.

same thing for local host except using ftp..............

[porl66]

Brad, you are possibly someone that may know the answer to my woes!

I had taken a copy of my live site to further develop locally and add a shopping cart. All was fine until I was having problems installing a template theme for Virtuemart. I noticed the tmp log path was reading the string from the host server (home/mak50008/public_html/tmp) so I changed it in the Global config to (applications/MAMP/htdocs/beth new ecommerce/tmp) and the screen went blank. I now cannot connect to http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ and any of the other sub folders. Have I done something terminal? Or can it be retrieved?

Help much appreciated Cheers

[salgaito]

I had the same issue, after looking around i realize i was using a password with double quote "
So for example my password was (123!"#).... i reset the user thru Cpanel and changed to a new password without the "

This is because in the config file you have this:

var $password = 'xxxxxxxx';

If you use single quote ' or double quote ", the php server configuration doesnt understand your real password and gets confused where that var ends.

So change your password or db name o db user to something that doesnt have quotes!

Cheers!

[chaminda_75]

hello friends,
i am new new to joomla, but learnd more things within few months.
i have successfully upload and see my site correctly. but second day i edit one page, normally i sued filezilla for upload. upter uploading the one file, i have seen erroro " cannot connect to database mysql " then i checked the all information in joomla site configaration file. but all the information are ok. actually what is the worng thing i have done. no idea. i am so worried about this.
please help me any one who has met such a problem and solved.
i hosted my site as free member of [url banned] site.
please please help me any one of the joomla members

[iboby]

after migration on live site, modify:
var $dbtype = 'mysql';
var $host = 'localhost';
var $user = 'db_your_use_name';
var $db = 'db_name';
var $dbprefix = 'jos_';

/* Server Settings */
var $live_site = ''; /*should be empty*/

/* Feed Settings */
var $log_path = 'path\\to\\your\\joomla\\logs';
var $tmp_path = 'path\\to\\your\\joomla\\tmp';

[CameronS]

Thanks for this thread it has got me over the line, I too had the database error message.

This might save someone an hour or two, I had created a new db user as per the advice from posts here but forgot to adjust the privileges so instead it took another 5 tries before I figured it out.

Got there in the end.

[shibu]

Hi,

If you get this error "Database Error: Unable to connect to the database: Could not connect to MySQL".. If the database connection is wrong, this error will display. You will edit the configuration.php file and make sure the database details.

[zombie4eva]

I had the same error "Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL" after installing a joomla template on another domain in the same hosting company (Hostgator). I created another MySql database and I think HERE COMES THE MISTAKE I GAVE THE SAME USERNAME to this database. After that I could not access any of my two sites.
So here is what I did:

1- Delete the new created database and site (the main one was the important one so I din't want to mess things up
2- I deleted the username (in the case it had been corrupted) created a new one with all the privileges on- by the way-(I named it the same as before so I had not to touch the PhpmyAdmin)
3- Voila!!! everything was back to normal

So big lesson is: DO NOT GIVE THE SAME USERNAME TO DIFFERENT DATABASES....you risk the dreaded "Unable to connect to the database: Could not connect to MySQL" message

Hope my experience is of any help

best

Cristian

Boy!!! am I glad to bump into to your suggestion... I had 3 sites with the same user name and all the three returned with the error...

I resolved this issue by going in to "MySQL Databses" from my cPanel and added a "new user" to the database, and deleted the one which had identical user.. I did this to all the three sites..Voila!!! it worked... Well I also had to add the new "user" info in the configuration.php file.

Thanks to your suggestion "DO NOT GIVE THE SAME USERNAME TO DIFFERENT DATABASES"

A valuable lesson learnt...

[salgaito]

Where do I find configuration.php?

Under the main folder of Joomla, that means that if you extract any version of Joomla, you will find configuration.php in the main extracted folder.

[bullrich_66]

I recently installed Joomla 1.5.15, and everything was working fine. I went into the Global Configuration utility and made a change to the site name, and promptly got the following error:

"Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL"

Other installations of Joomla on the same server are working correctly, as was this one before I made that change. I uninstalled, cleaned the temps files, and then re-installed. Same thing. This is INFURIATING.

I manually removed the changes I made to the configuration.php, but no luck. I'm stumped. When using the Global Configuration utility in the Admin Site, what other changes are written?

Any ideas?

[salgaito]

I recently installed Joomla 1.5.15, and everything was working fine. I went into the Global Configuration utility and made a change to the site name, and promptly got the following error:

"Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL"

Other installations of Joomla on the same server are working correctly, as was this one before I made that change. I uninstalled, cleaned the temps files, and then re-installed. Same thing. This is INFURIATING.

I manually removed the changes I made to the configuration.php, but no luck. I'm stumped. When using the Global Configuration utility in the Admin Site, what other changes are written?

Any ideas?

For what you say i can tell that you don't have issues with your web server or database configuration, because other websites area working fine. In the other side you might be getting the same Error if you are using the same (database_name/username) you were having problems with.

You could try to make a new install with a "never used before" database, don't forget to clean the cache of your browser.

[keefrichards]

I recently installed Joomla 1.5.15, and everything was working fine. I went into the Global Configuration utility and made a change to the site name, and promptly got the following error:

"Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL"

Other installations of Joomla on the same server are working correctly, as was this one before I made that change. I uninstalled, cleaned the temps files, and then re-installed. Same thing. This is INFURIATING.

I manually removed the changes I made to the configuration.php, but no luck. I'm stumped. When using the Global Configuration utility in the Admin Site, what other changes are written?

Any ideas?

For what you say i can tell that you don't have issues with your web server or database configuration, because other websites area working fine. In the other side you might be getting the same Error if you are using the same (database_name/username) you were having problems with.

You could try to make a new install with a "never used before" database, don't forget to clean the cache of your browser.

It's the old configuration.php file problem. It doesn't have the same password as the MySQL db. Need to open the configuration file, locate the password and change it to the correct one.

[cogitans]

I recently installed Joomla 1.5.15, and everything was working fine. I went into the Global Configuration utility and made a change to the site name, and promptly got the following error:

"Database Error: Unable to connect to the database:Could not connect to MySQL"

Other installations of Joomla on the same server are working correctly, as was this one before I made that change. I uninstalled, cleaned the temps files, and then re-installed. Same thing. This is INFURIATING.

I manually removed the changes I made to the configuration.php, but no luck. I'm stumped. When using the Global Configuration utility in the Admin Site, what other changes are written?

Any ideas?

I was struggling with this issue quite some time. I was pretty sure that all my username and password and stuff in the configuration.php was correct. I even watched a guide-video on how to setup Joomla!. And they didn't solve my problem either. Then I used my own imagination...which worked. To solve this problem simply write ""mysql6.[url banned].com" or whatever you get as summary when you create the database. If you put this information instead of "localhost" everything works out fine ;-)