Database connection error. Magento 1.7 with correct login info using PHP 5.4

Question

While trying to connect with Installation Wizard, I get a Database connection error. Though I was able to set-up a basic user-login on Codegniter to the same database using the same credentials. So that should eleminate this common assumption. What are some other potential issues?

This is in the root directory, while we have Magento working fine on the same server, using a different domain name under /magento directory.

I have scoured the web and put in 12 hours with little luck on resolving this. We are using fastCGI / suPHP and have changed all file permissions to 755 / 644.

Updates... While testing a new .zip file from Magento site on a server that worked previously, I found the same issue. Could it be they have changed these downloads and my issue? I tried a tar file and now both servers show the error...

The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
cookies.

All of these errors, I was not experiencing while testing Magento before now attempting to take it into a real-world service. I even found what setting worked best on Apache.

Chrome says...

The webpage at http://www.axxxa.com/magento/index.php/install/ has resulted in too many
redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the
problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your
computer.

And IE gets confused for quite some time before sharing this valuable data...

This page can't be displayed

Answer 1

Are you using localhost as your database host? I ran into this problem previously and the fix was to use 127.0.0.1 instead.

I would also check your .htaccess file in detail as the error on Firefox seem to suggest an infinite loop in your rewrite/redirect. Perhaps try disable the mod_rewrite part of your .htaccess.

Last but not least, I would make sure your URL in your database table core_config_data matches up with what's in your virtual host - in particular around www or non-www.