MySQL error 2002: error establishing connection to database_MySQL

Ah, panic mode at 7AM this morning, when a bunch of WordPress sites I host with a Digital Ocean droplet are all suddenly down, only to be presented with the infamous WordPress database error being displayed in the browser;Error Establishing a Database Connection.

I quickly go to access the phpMyAdmin login (which is up), enter my login credentials, followed by aMySQL error 2002greeting. I can’t log in… huh?!

Surely not, but perhaps the MySQL server isn’t running??! So I SSH into the box, and run:

service mysql status

Only to find out that indeed,MySQL server is not running!

Simple fix – start up the MySQL server again:

service mysql start

And everything went back to normal once more. Apparently if there’s a sudden spike in CPU memory usage it can take down the MySQL server… something to look into if it keeps reoccurring I guess.