Repairing Webmail Error: “A fatal error has occurred DB Error: connect failed” to Log in

If you receive the following error during attempting to login into Horde Webmail:

"A fatal error has occurred DB Error: connect failed Details have been logged for the administrator. "

Please make sure that the following line exists in the directory /etc/my.conf:

socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

Also check that Mysql service is running and that the /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock socket exists. Make sure that the Horde user is able to connect to the Horde database with a password from etc/psa/.webmail.shadow using the command:

# mysql -uhorde -p`cat /etc/psa/.webmail.shadow` -D horde


If /etc/psa/.webmail.shadow is missing, put some password into this file and change the password for the Horde user in the MySQL database using the query listed below. If you get the error, make sure that the only one Horde MySQL user exists in the user table in MySQL database and try to change its password with a MySQL query like:

# mysql -uadmin -p`cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow` -D mysqlmysql> update user set password=password(”THE_PASSWORD_FROM_WEBMAIL.SHADOW”) where user=”horde”;mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Look into the psa-horde log (by default: /var/log/psa-horde). If you see something like:

Nov 02 12:55:06 HORDE [emergency] [horde] DB Error: connect failed: [nativecode=Access denied for user: ‘root@localhost’ (Using password: NO)] ** Array [on line 1329 of “/usr/share/psa-horde/lib/Horde/DataTree/sql.php”]

Make sure that sql.safe_mode is disabled in php.ini, such as:

sql.safe_mode=Off

Restart Apache after changes in php.ini have been made.

Source: mohammednv