not working by default -- mysql socket inaccessible

[Abel Cheung]

Problem is almost stated in summary -- phpmyadmin doesn't work by default, because parent folder of mysql socket is unreadable by www-data user:

root@mari:/# ls -ld /var/run/mysqld
drwxrwx--- 2 mysql root 80 2006-01-21 19:26 /var/run/mysqld

I'm really not sure if mysql socket should be allowed access to everybody (including www-data), or phpmyadmin should do something like suexec in order to change to mysql user before opening socket file.