Re: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

[Lynn Etheredge]

$ mysql
Warning: World-writable config file '/etc/my.cnf' is ignored
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)

so I changed my /etc/my.cnf file to

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/tmp/mysql.sock

[client]
socket=/tmp/mysql.sock
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
#old_passwords=1

now I am getting the following errors.
$ mysql
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)
$ mysqld_safe
Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql
/usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 380: /var/lib/mysql/something.com.err: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/mysqld_safe: line 388: /var/lib/mysql/something.com.err: No such file or directory
STOPPING server from pid file /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
tee: /var/lib/mysql/something.com.err: Permission denied
080922 16:06:44 mysqld ended
tee: /var/lib/mysql/something.com.err: Permission denied

I have looked through the posts on this issue and haven't found a solution that I thought would fix my problem. Please help. Thank you.