My sites are down and my host doesn't know why....

I'm having an issue w/my host and was hoping someone here could lend a hand.

My hosting company is very professional and accomodating but also very small. Last nite sometime between 5pm and 8pm "something" happened that caused my databases (MySql)...one for Wordpress and one for ZenCart... to stop communicating with the blog and shopping cart. Giving me the following error:

"Error establishing a database connection" on the wordpress side and something very similar on the shopping cart side. Basically the connection between the sites and the DBs is gone.

The facts:

Both Databases went down sometime between 5 and 8
The site was active at around 5pm...I visited as soon as I arrived home from work.
The site was down at 8pm...I went back to make some changes and realize it was down
No changes were made between 5 and 8 by ME.
The databases seem to be OK in cpanel
All three config files containing database settings are intact

The admin says he can access my databases via command prompt and view the tables. Note:Just because you can "see" the tables doens't necessarily confirm a connection...just me thinkin'
The admin says the MySQL server is up and running fine

PHP Version: 5.2.5
MYSQL Version: 4.1.22
Apache: 1.3.41

That's my best info right now. Any thoughts? I'm about 99% sure that this is a hosting issue but I've been wrong before

 

sometimes it can happen that the database servers block certain ips.
You can clear these ips using mysqladmin flushhost command.
Check using command prompt if mysql is able to connect to the database host.

 

Maybe a socket error? What do the error logs say

 

Thanks for the replies. Problem solved. Not sure exactly what happened but according to host admin there was an issue with and upgrade. I guess that happens

 

I guess they just upgraded php, and forgot to build it with mysql support?

 

Guess it had something to do with max connections etc...hosting plan upgrade or software upgrade?

 

Your host doesn't know what hes doing with his own servers.

I bet if he went back through logs he would find these errors, and a result from those errors would be the cause of the non-communication with the DB.

If you got a error on your browser - there is a log made of that error on the backend.

 

The host might have incorrectly built mysql. Lately the new versions don't accept localhost as a default name and so many scripts that use "localhost" as the server stop working. That MIGHT be what happened here.