up vote 5 down vote favorite

I get this error when I try to create something with WP CLI:

Error establishing a database connection. This either means that the username and password information in your `wp-config.php` file is incorrect or we can’t contact the database server at `localhost`. This could mean your host’s database server is down.

But I can open the site with the link: http://localhost:8888/projectname

Any idea?

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up vote 6 down vote

Go into your wp-config.php and change your DB_HOST to 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost.

Credit goes to Craig Wayne above in the comments.

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  • God bless You & Craig Wayne – Mirko Oct 10 at 11:20
  • In MAMP Pro I also had to check "Allow network access to MySQL" for this to work. – Nick M Oct 22 at 6:16
  • I tried this but no help. I'm using Bedrock boilerplate. I went thru wp-config and .env file over and over again, went thru MAMPs configs over and over again. Debugged the wb-db.php file. Then I removed the # from the DB_HOST row in .env, and all is good. – Tom Nov 20 at 9:45
up vote 1 down vote

Make sure to use the MAMP PHP binary. You can check the which PHP Version WP CLI is running with 

php wp-cli.phar --info

To use the latest MAMP PHP you need to modify your bash or zsh profile:

PHP_VERSION=$(ls /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/ | sort -n | tail -1)
export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/${PHP_VERSION}/bin:$PATH

Make sure to reload the profile:

source ~/.bash_profile

Make sure that the changes are applied correctly:

  php wp-cli.phar --info
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  • That first command just gives the error Could not open input file: wp-cli.phar – Felix Eve Sep 18 at 8:19
  • Did you run the command in the wordpress root folder? – eknows Sep 18 at 10:16
  • yes, but there is no wp-cli.phar file in the root of the WP directory. – Felix Eve Sep 18 at 10:58
  • Here you can find more informations how to install the wp-cli.phar: (wp-cli.org) – eknows Sep 20 at 5:53
up vote 0 down vote

Step1: check if your mysql server is running Step2: if yes then you can log in to mysql using 

mysql -u root -p

then enter your password: ( you must use this command from terminal ) then use following command to ensure that database exists:

show databases;
grant all privileges on database_name.* to 'root'@'localhost' identified by 'password';
flush privileges;
exit;

now edit the wp-config.php file and search for 

define('DB_NAME', 'db_name');
define('DB_USER', 'root');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password');
define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');

Now restart the server and try to login to your wordpress dashboard. I hope it helps.

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  • "mysql -u root -p" gives me "Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)" – Klevis Miho Jan 12 at 11:14
  • when you set up your mysql database, you must have entered a password. Use that password. If you didn't configure password at the time of mysql database set up, just hit enter instead of any password. – maverick Jan 12 at 11:29
  • I did what you wrote. Can connect to the database with "mysql -u root -p". Also the privileges are granted. But the error is still there. – Klevis Miho Jan 15 at 9:42
  • 1
    I've found that if i change localhost to 127.0.0.1 in my wp-config.php, everything works fine... i feel like theres a bigger problem here – Craig Wayne Jun 1 at 7:03
  • 1
    With a clean install of WordPress v3.6.9 and WP-CLI v1.5.1 @CraigWayne 's solution worked perfectly. – betweenbrain Jun 26 at 15:30
up vote 0 down vote

In my case, besides the aforementioned error message, I also got the warnings below:

PHP Warning:  mysqli_real_connect(): Server sent charset (255) unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1531
Warning: mysqli_real_connect(): Server sent charset (255) unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1531
PHP Warning:  mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2054): Server sent charset unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1531
Warning: mysqli_real_connect(): (HY000/2054): Server sent charset unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1531
PHP Deprecated:  mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562
Deprecated: mysql_connect(): The mysql extension is deprecated and will be removed in the future: use mysqli or PDO instead in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562
PHP Warning:  mysql_connect(): Server sent charset (255) unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562
Warning: mysql_connect(): Server sent charset (255) unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562
PHP Warning:  mysql_connect(): Server sent charset unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562
Warning: mysql_connect(): Server sent charset unknown to the client. Please, report to the developers in /var/www/html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 1562

According to this question, this issue happens because the default charset for MySQL 8.0 is utfmb4.

In fact, I could replicate the error by upgrading from MySQL 5.7 to MySQL 8.0

I solved the issue by exporting the database, downgrading to MySQL 5.7 and re-importing the data. I also ran tests on MariaDB 10.3 and it works fine.

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