connection error - Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql-xxxxx.sock' (111)

[ahmed plummer]

all,

i'm relatively new to mysql, so perhaps someone out there can help me out. i should note before i describe my problem that this connection was working fine for the past couple of months, and only started exhibiting this behavior late last week.

when i try to connect to mysql, via shell access or php, i get the following error:
Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql-xxxxx.sock' (111)

actually, via shell access, it's a bit more informative:
ERROR 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql-xxxxx.sock' (111)

i've tried cycling the mysql service and that did nothing that i could tell. here is where i get really confused though. i also tried stopping the service and changing the root password, which was successful, and then allowed me to successfully login to mysql via the shell, but only once. after the successful login, i exited and attempted to login again and immediately started receiving the above error again. at this point, if i try to use a mysqladmin function, such as ping, i get an error message telling me 'Access denied for user: root@localhost' (Using password: YES)'.

this is version 4.0.18-standard running on linux.

needless to say, i'm not quite sure what is going on. any help would be appreciated. and please let me know if more detailed info is needed to help solve my problem.

thanks.