mySQL no longer working

This seems to have appeared with the 10.7.4 update (from Combo), but it can be shear coincidence.

I'm facing a problem with mySQL, and I'm not sure what's involved as some other issues are cropping and I don't know what's the basic issue that's triggering all the others.

- When trying to setup a joomal site in my user/sites location , when I validate the database creation screen I get the message: unable to create database: unable to get to mySQL. (From within a MAMP virtual server site it works and I create the database).

- If I create via MAMP a joomla site in my user/sites/ folder, when I want to log into it va http://localhost/~myuser/mysite I get "unable to connect to mySQL".

in MAMP the user and password are 'root' (same as defaults for other DB). Logging with http://mysite:8888 (MAMP virtual server) works. Server on OS X is running on different ports than MAMP.

- I cannot create/upload through my admin account a site location in /Library/Webserver/Documents, although it's an admin account.

- After FTP transferring from my Desktop to OSX or MAMP server locations (advised for Akeeba Backups of joomal sites) I find many files with com.apple.quarantine set ???

- For sites that were created a few weeks ago, I don't have any problem connecting to them.

I've got the feeling that my account is to blame somehow, as it's been transferred from numerous OS X versions to the next one, and is all but "clean" (lot of "old" files that didn't get erased but don't seem to be used any longer), and I did "repair authorisations", fsck -fy, all things I could think of.

I don't see anything obvious, and how could I diagnose this ?

- Operating with a different admin empowered account doesn't seem to improve things, though.

On the other hand, I'm having this issue on my iMac but also on my MacBook Air, which is less than one year old and didn't go through many OS X releases.

How can I restore mysql settings to it's defaults ?

(as MAMP changes some settings, but having read some posts I did made some corrections that were suggested eg: the /var/mysql/mysql.sock versus /tmp/mysql.sock issue)

As you can see I'm lost here and will welcome any hint at getting back to a working situation.

Message was edited by: Jacques Lacroute - few corrections