[Rails] How do I get MySQL working?

I'm in chapter 16 of the book _Agile Web Development with Rails_. I
was able to get Apache/Passenger working, but now I'm stuck on MySQL.
When I enter "mysql -u root", I get the message:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket
'/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock'

I created the /var/run/mysqld directory and the /var/run/mysqld/
mysqld.sock file. However, I was not able to grant ownership of this
file to mysql, because the user mysql doesn't exist.

What exactly do I need to do?

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