PHP Connection failed: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused

Question

I am trying to use a PHP connection to connect MySQL Database which is on phpmyadmin. Nothing fancy about the connection just trying to see whether the connection is successful or not. I am using MAMP to host the database, the connection I am trying to use is this:

<?php
$servername = "127.0.0.1";
$username = "root";
$password = "root";

try {
    $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=AppDatabase", $username, $password);
    // set the PDO error mode to exception
    $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    echo "Connected successfully"; 
}
catch(PDOException $e)
{
    echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}
?>

I have been using postman to test to see if the connection is working, but I keep receiving this error message:

Connection failed: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused

Before I was receiving an error message of:

Connection failed: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory

This was because I had set the servername to localhost, through changing this to the IP address it has given me connection refused and I have no idea what is wrong.

Any help regarding this would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I found the reason why the connection was not working, it was because the connection was trying to connect to port 8888, when it needed to connect to port 8889.

$conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;port=8889;dbname=AppDatabase", $username, $password); 

This fixed the problem, although changing the server name to localhost still gives the error.

Connection failed: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory

But it connects successfully when the IP address is entered for the server name.

Answer 2

I spent quite a few hours in a docker environment where all my containers are docker containers and I was using Phinx for migrations. Just to share different responses with different configurations.

Working solutions

"host" => "db", // {docker container's name} Worked
"host" => "172.22.112.1", // {some docker IP through ipconfig - may change on every instance - usually something like 172.x.x.x} Worked

Non-working solutions

"host" => "127.0.0.1", // SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Connection refused
"host" => "docker.host.internal", //  SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name does not resolve
"host" => "localhost", //  SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory

I was running Phinx in following way.

docker compose --env-file .env run --rm phinx status -e development

Answer 3

In my case MySQL sever was not running. I restarted the MySQL server and issue was resolved.

//on ubuntu server
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start

To avoid MySQL stop problem, you can use the "initctl" utility in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux to make sure the service restarts in case of a failure or reboot. Please consider talking a snapshot of root volume (with mysql stopped) before performing this operations for data retention purpose[8]. You can use the following commands to manage the mysql service with "initctl" utility with stop and start operations.

$ sudo initctl stop mysql
$ sudo initctl start mysql

To verify the working, you can check the status of the service and get the process id (pid), simulate a failure by killing the "mysql" process and verify its status as running with new process id after sometime (typically within 1 minute) using the following commands.

$ sudo initctl status mysql         # get pid
$ sudo kill -9 <pid>                # kill mysql process
$ sudo initctl status mysql         # verify status as running after sometime

Note : In latest Ubuntu version now initctl is replaced by systemctl

Answer 4

Using MAMP I changed the host=localhost to host=127.0.0.1. But a new issue came "connection refused"

Solved this by putting 'port' => '8889', in 'Datasources' => [

Answer 5

1. server cert verify flag

I was required to use SSL to connect, and needed to set PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_VERIFY_SERVER_CERT to false in the new PDO options array, besides the entry PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA for the CA file.

Without it, the mysql log on the server helpfully mentions

2021-07-27 17:02:51 597605 [Warning] Aborted connection 597605 to db: 'unconnected' user: 'unauthenticated' host: '192.168.10.123' (This connection closed normally without authentication)

where I was definitely passing the right db and username and such in the DSN. An empty options array will show the db and user in the error log, at least. I am sure there is a valid, technical reason for these things.
I am adding this information so I can more easily find it, the next time I end up on this page..

2. host in connection string

In the context of SSL, I've also seen the error when using the IP address instead of the hostname to connect, if the hostname was used as CN (Common Name) in the certificate.

Answer 6

Using MAMP ON Mac, I solve my problem by renaming

/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock.lock

to

/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock

Answer 7

For me was php version from mac instead of MAMP, PATH variable on .bash_profile was wrong. I just prepend the MAMP PHP bin folder to the $PATH env variable. For me was:

/Applications/mampstack-7.1.21-0/php/bin

1. In terminal run vim ~/.bash_profile to open ~/.bash_profile

2. Type i to be able to edit the file, add the bin directory as PATH variable on the top to the file:

   export PATH="/Applications/mampstack-7.1.21-0/php/bin/:$PATH"

3. Hit ESC, Type :wq, and hit Enter

4. In Terminal run source ~/.bash_profile
5. In Terminal type which php, output should be the path to MAMP PHP install.

Answer 8

I had the same issue on a docker container from php:8.0-fpm-alpine image. I just added the following line in the Dockerfile and it fixed the issue:

RUN apk add mysql-client

Answer 9

We've just experienced this issue on one of our servers, and it occured when all of the RAM was used up. This is noticeable when you run htop and monitor the Memory; as soon as it maxed out, the error occured, and the Memory reading then suddenly reduced. We had a node process running that was using a hefty amount of RAM. Once we terminated that process, it freed up a lot of RAM, and as a result the error no longer appeared.

It appears that the issue specific to you was resolved, but I just wanted to provide the reason why I was facing this issue, in case this is related to anyone else :-)

Answer 10

I had a similar problem once, turned out the User in the database was created with something like:

CREATE USER 'webpage'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

worked fine when the connection details php script had localhost, but not when the IP address was there. A quick swap (ip address when creating user and localhost in connection details) revealed those two things have to match.

Answer 11

For everyone if you still strugle with Refusing connection, here is my advice. Download XAMPP or other similar sw and just start MySQL. You dont have to run apache or other things just the MySQL.