Symfony - How to connect to remote mysql database without install mysql-server

Question

I am trying to connect to a remote mysql database with my Symfony application. I don't want to install the mysql-server package on my server if I don't need to but when I try to connect, I get the following error:

  [Doctrine\DBAL\Exception\ConnectionException]                                     
  An exception occured in driver: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory  


  [Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDOException]               
  SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory                                                          


  [PDOException]                                    
  SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory  

Here's what my database configuration look like. In the variables, I setup pdo_mysql as the driver and the other fields are working well.

doctrine:
    dbal:
        default_connection: default
        connections:
            default:
                driver:   %database.driver%
                host:     %database.host%
                port:     %database.port%
                dbname:   %database.name%
                user:     %database.user%
                password: %database.password%
                charset:  UTF8     

Edit1: If I install mysql-server, it works and the error is gone.
Edit2: My server is running Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

Answer 1

You should be able to install client on Ubuntu like this:

apt-get install mysql-client

I think 5.5 is the latest. Go here for setting up MariaDB: https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/#mirror=syringa&distro=Ubuntu

makes more sense nowadays to use MariaDB instead:

---

EDIT #2

to add remote useron the remote system:

CREATE USER 'fooUser'@'192.168.40.200' IDENTIFIED BY 'myPassword';

check the user table to see if they can connect from remote system:

use mysql;
SELECT Host,User,Password,ssl_type from user;

ssl_type is if you are using SSL to connect, you could leave that out.