And best way, that will set your mind at ease even if you’re worried that “mysql is running but not responding; it is stuck”: connect to MySQL and issue SELECT

And best way, that will set your mind at ease even if you’re worried that “mysql is running but not responding; it is stuck”: connect to MySQL and issue SELECT 1, SELECT NOW(), SELECT something. Fortunately this is easy: $ echo "select now();" | mysql now() 2009-10-05 19:24:22