Is your database sever on the localhost and running on the default port?

What arguments to mysql are you using to connect on the command line?

You might want look at something like:

my $db = 'ram';
my $host = ''; # hostname
my $port = ''; # portnumber
$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:database=$db;host=$host;port=$port",'ro
+ot','root') or die "Connection Error: $DBI::errstr\n";
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