MySQL SSH tunnel on OSX

OSX fails to connect mysql to ssh tunnel

SSH tunnelling is a useful method for connecting to a MySQL server which is behind a firewall and restricted to localhost users.  i.e. A web server

#create an SSH tunnel between the local port 9000 and the remote port 3306

ssh -L 9000:localhost:3306

#  connect the local mysql client

mysql --port 9000 --host localhost -u user -p  password

Workaround

On OSX specifying the host as localhost will cause the mysql client to attempt to connect to a socket file

/tmp/mysql.sock

which does not exist.

To work around use the loopback address to replace the hostname in the mysql command line

mysql -P 9000 -h 127.0.01 -u user -p password