Just one more reminder why I refuse to use MySQL for anything:
$ ssh user@domain.com -L8888:localhost:3306
then, in another shell:
$ mysql --port=8888 --host=localhost somedatabase ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
Why do people use this turd?
Well, this is my point. MySQL should be using TCP/IP, not the Unix domain socket in this case (specifying host and port should be enough to force it to do so). The fact that it doesn't is why I consider it broken. It's also worth noting that this does work for me on an different version of MySQL, so this is probably just one more thing they've regressed in an update.
The traditional expectation is that command line arguments override settings in the .ini file, but MySQL appears to do this rather inconsistently (some work this way, some don't). Overall this seems to indicate badly broken option parsing.
Mine does that fine. The socket file on my computer's MySQL installation is so far removed from normalcy even for local connections I use TCP/IP.