troubleshooting Drush bootstrap on localhost

Troubleshooting the "Drush was not able to start (bootstrap) the Drupal database." when trying to run in on a localhost configuration.

Many thanks to Chris Wells from Redfin Solutions for this troubleshooting tip on getting drush to work in a localhost configuration.

In the settings.php file, try changing

$db_url = 'mysqli://username@localhost/example';
$db_prefix = '';
to
$db_url = 'mysqli://username@127.0.0.1/example';
$db_prefix = '';


comment #12 http://drupal.org/node/502252
"... I tried running "drush sql cli" (or use the command from "drush sql connect") and see if it connects. I was having a problem with MySQL not connecting (ergo, it can't connect to the DB do Drush reports that it's not highly-enough bootstrapped).

For me, the problem was that the settings.php command string had "localhost" as the server. MySQL will try and connect through a socket if the host is localhost; for me, sockets were disabled..."