Re: 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111

[Jim Smith]

I'm running Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.
I was able to resolve this by using the term "localhost" rather than the loopback IP or server name in the mysql_connect() function. Took me a bit to stumble on it, I suspect if you are accessing mysql from php and both reside on the same server you must use localhost as the server name. I noted during testing that localhost made use of the mysql.sock interface rather than the TCP/IP socket. Anyway, using localhost solved it for me.