Can’t connect to MySQL on localhost using PHP on CentOS

This is an issue i’ve seen a couple of times over the past month:

Can’t connect to MySQL server on ’127.0.0.1′ (13)

So you’ve checked your server, MySQL is running and you’ve checked your credentials, they’re all valid yet you still can’t connect to your database.

Don’t Panic!

There is actually a very simple explanation and “SELinux”. For some reason, which i won’t want to go into, this blocks your PHP script from connecting to the MySQL server. But how do you stop this behaviour?

Simples! Login to your server and at the prompt do this:

1. Edit /etc/sysconfig/selinux and set SELINUX=permissive
2. (You will need to be root for this step):
   echo 0 >/selinux/enforce

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