*And best way, that will set your mind at ease even if you’re worried that “mysq...

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