I've already looked into this but since I am running on Ubuntu 10.04 instead of XAMPP and have already created the phpmyadmin database and I can log in through terminal with both the root and phpmyadmin users.
How I installed: sudo apt-get install lamp-server^ sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
I can login locally on terminal using both the root and phpmyadmin users. I can view the phpmyadmin login page. A phpinfo.php page I posted to server works.
I have successfully connected by switching the protocol to tcp and connecting to '127.0.0.1' instead of 'localhost'. Still cannot connect via Unix Socket though even though the MySql daemon socket is running.