Recently, I’ve discovered that in addition to the usual configuration required to install phpMyAdmin on Mac OS X, you now have to set the socket and connect_type variables in the phpMyAdmin config file to get it to talk to MySQL. Like so:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['socket'] = '/tmp/mysql.sock';
$cfg['Servers'][$i]['connect_type'] = 'socket';

I’m not sure why this is. I was getting, “Error 2002: Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket” but after setting these configuration variables, it’s running fine. It was tricky to work this out though so I’m posting it here in the hopes it will save someone else some time.

Note: I most likely have no idea how to solve your MySQL/phpMyAdmin problem. I recommend reading the respective products’ documentation.