Symptoms

Attempts to manage customer’s MySQL databases produce errors:

Error: Connection to the database server has failed because of network problems: Try to establish connection failed

The MySQL server is marked in red on the Tools & Settings > Database Servers screen.

Cause

This problem may be caused by Parallels Plesk Panel (Plesk) storing an incorrect MySQL server administrator password.

Resolution

To solve the problem and reconnect Plesk with the MySQL server, follow these steps:

1. Stop the MySQL server (but not “Plesk SQL Server”) from running on port 3306 using the Plesk Services Monitor tray utility.
2. Edit the MySQL configuration file, %plesk_dir%\Databases\MySQL\Data\my.ini, and add the line skip-grant-tables to the [mysqld] section.
3. Start the MySQL server.
4. Log in to MySQL without the password:
5. “%plesk_dir%\Databases\MySQL51\bin\mysql.exe”
6. Change the password for the MySQL administrator:
7. UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = password(‘newpassword’) WHERE User = ‘admin’;
8. Remove skip-grant-tables from the MySQL configuration file and restart the service.
9. Log in to the Plesk interface, go to database server management settings (Tools & Settings > Database Servers), and change the password for the corresponding database server to the one set in step 5. Plesk will re-establish the connection to the server.