MySQL failing to establish a connection using PHP - php

Question

Using ubuntu 12.04 64 bit on Lenovo t410.
Using apache2 and Mysql 5.5 and attempting to connect via localhost
I am attempting to establish a connection to a database that I made on localhost. When the line of code is reached to establish a connection, it seems Mysql simply hangs, and there is no error message displayed after. I verified that an echo works immediately prior to the connection attempt. I know that apache2 server is working as I can access the index page and display my html form.
I have tried etc/mysql/my.cnf setting the bind address to localhost.
My line of code looks like:
// Attempts to establish connection to MySql server
$connection = mysql_connect("localhost","username","password");
// Prints error message if the connection to MySql fails
if (!$connection){
die("Connection failed: " . mysql_error());
}
echo "Connection established.";
I tried the connection line with single quotes and with no semi-colon as well.
I am willing to post the contents of any configuration file I have if the error isn't syntax. I haven't done anything fancy to Ubuntu, everything is the default install. I am new to CS and especially databases, PHP, and networking. This is my little experiment that I am stuck on.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Don

Answer 1

Can it be, because there is no error message, that the connection IS established, but you didn't do anything with it?
I mean, what is the rest of your code, is there after your code here something like:
mysql_select_db("database_name",$connection);

Answer 2

After reading your last comment, it appears the mysql extensions are not being loaded. Have a look at your php.ini, uncomment the following line (remove the semicolon at the beginning of the line) and restart your apache:
extension=php_mysql.so
Make sure the extension exists in the php extensions directory.
Due to the fact that you are using MySQL version > 4.1.3 it is strongly recommended that you use the mysqli extension instead. Have a look at this: PHP: MySQL Overview

Answer 3

try to set
$mysql_user = "your_username";
$mysql_pass = "your_password";
$mysql_server = "Servername";
$link = mysql_connect($mysql_server,$mysql_user,$mysql_pass);
if (!$link) {
header('HTTP/1.1 500');
exit();