I have installed the MySQL server under Linux RedHat 7.2, by the book. I compiled the sources, with
# make
# make install
I typed:
# scripts/mysql_install_db

then I started the server:
# bin/safe_mysql &
The server returned the PID e.g. [1853] so everything seemed ok
Then I typed
# bin/mysqladmin -u root status
in order to check whether the server is ok
I got this error message:
bin/mysqladmin: connect to server 'localhost' failed
error: Cannot connect to local MySQL server through socket /tmp/mysql.sock (111)
Check that mysqld is running and the socket /tmp/mysql.sock exists

I checked, and the socket exists. Can anyone help me? Why doesn't mysql start?