[tlug] MySQL behaving strangely

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

TLUG,

I'm going through the post-hard-drive-crash process of reinstalling 
everything, and MySQL is acting very strange.

I installed it as I always have done, but using Ubuntu's Synaptic 
Package Manager to install all the default packages for a LAMP server. 
Every time before I've done this it has worked like a dream.

It seemed to work when I first installed it yesterday, but today, when 
trying to access phpMyAdmin, I got this error:
#2002 - The server is not responding (or the local MySQL server's socket 
is not correctly configured)

I figured I'd give MySQL a bit of a kick just to see if that would help:

dave@example.com:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld restart

But it gave me this new and unusual response:

sudo: /etc/init.d/mysqld: command not found

Huh. Weird. But I thought it was running, so I ran:

dave@example.com:~$ ps aux | grep mysql

And it said back to me:

root     11171  0.0  0.0   1772   532 ?        S    20:36   0:00 /bin/sh 
/usr/bin/mysqld_safe
mysql    11290  0.1  0.7 126708 15424 ?        Sl   20:36   0:00 
/usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/usr --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user=mysql 
--pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --skip-external-locking 
--port=3306 --socket=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
root     11291  0.0  0.0   2920   736 ?        S    20:36   0:00 logger 
-p daemon.err -t mysqld_safe -i -t mysqld
dave     11309  0.0  0.0   3004   764 pts/0    R+   20:37   0:00 grep mysql

I'm obviously no expert (closer to babe-in-the-woods in the grand scheme 
of things), but it looks like MySQL is running in some kind of safe mode 
or something?

I tried rebooting, which is how people who are clueless like me pretend 
problems can be solved, and it still came up the same, indicating that 
this safe mode seems to be locked in.

Any ideas why it is doing this, and how to get MySQL happy again?

--
Dave M G