Unable to connect to local MySQL server via socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2 "No such file or directory")

I just formatted my drive and installed MariaDB on Linux Mint 17.

$ mysql --version
mysql  Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.1.1-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2

      

        
        
        
      

    

I typed: mysql -u root -p gave me my passowrd and got this:

ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2 "No such file or directory")

      

        
        
        
      

    

I did a search and found mysqld.sock was missing. I read a lot of posts about this but nothing fixed it for me. How do I get mysqld.sock? Do I have to install some MySQL files to get it? If so, will MariaDB be affected?