Can't connect Ruby on Rails to remote mysql database

Question

I'm trying to connect my rails 3 app to a mysql database hosted on a godaddy server. I am able to connect remotely using a mysql client, but not when I run the applicaton. I was able to connect on a local mysql, but when I try to connect to my remotely hosted database I get this error:

Mysql2::Error (Can't connect to MySQL server on '[host ip address]' (111))

Here is my database.yml

development:
    adapter: mysql2
    encoding: utf8
    host: host_ip_address
    port: 3306
    database: database_name
    username: user_name
    password: password

I'm developing my application on an Ubuntu machine if that helps.

Solution 1

I'm guessing that, per my original comment, your remote DB is refusing connections from anything but localhost. Based on that assumption, here are two solutions:

1. Use a ssh tunnel. There are tons of howto's for connecting over ssh tunnel, e.g., http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/access-your-mysql-server-remotely-over-ssh/.

2. Make sure your remote DB is accepting remote connections. Check out the accepted answer on the following stackoverflow thread Can't connect to MySQL server error 111

Solution 2

• In your my.cnf, look for this line:

  bind-address = 127.0.0.1 
  

  and set address to 0.0.0.0

• Access mysql:

  mysql -u root -p
  

• Than create a user on mysql server and grant privileges to all:

  CREATE USER 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass';
  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%'WITH GRANT OPTION;
  

Comments

[Tony]

Thanks alot the SSH tunnel connection worked. I had to enable ssh connections on my server, but it worked.