I've never had problems installing and configuring mysql server in kubuntu but now it's just being stubborn, here's my issue:

I installed the packages mysql-server, mysql-client (both 5.1), the server package asked me to put a root password, which I did, it then started saying "access denied", on anything

Later on, I decided to purge the packages and re-install and gave a tweak to the my.cnf and not it says

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)

Please, is there a way to do a fresh start on this and do it right this time? I don't know if I'm missing something but the /var/lib/mysql is not empty but there is no .pid, now the mysql service won't start, there is no mysql.sock either

Any help appreciated