MYSQL no longer starting on Mac with MAMP - mysql

Question

Up until today MYSQL was working OK for months with 2 MAMP Drupal localhost builds.
But now MYSQL no longer loads.
When opening MAMP the Apache Server starts,
whereas the MYSQL Server does not start.
This means the "Open WebStart page" option is greyed over and the Drupal path that would normally load the site just displays an error.
Using Terminal, if I run:
which mysql
the response is:
/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql
But if I try to login into MYSQL via Terminal:
mysql -u (myuser) -p
I am prompted for the password, but after entering correct password I receive:
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket
'/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
I checked that path, and there is no mysql.sock file there. In that directory there is just one file titled .dummy that has no content in it.
Some forums relating to the same error suggest I check and stop any other running MYSQL instances, but I don't appear to have any.
For example I ran:
ps -ef | grep mysql
And I just receive this:
501 11212 10699 0 12:31pm ttys000 0:00.00 grep mysql
I don't entirely understand that response, but it looks like there is nothing running that I can 'kill'.
Also, if I try things like:
sudo service mysql start
I am prompted for my Mac user password, which I enter, but I am then given the error:
sudo: service: command not found
Any help here would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I ran:
mysqld
And received a lot of information! Too long to paste here,
but some things I noticed were:
2019-02-14T03:01:33.211495Z 0 [Note] --secure-file-priv is set to NULL.
Operations related to importing and exporting data are disabled
I don't know how to address the above, but it sounds like it's not helping the situation?
Further on from there, the first 'warning' from the list was:
[ERROR] Can't open the mysql.plugin table. Please run mysql_upgrade to create it.
I followed that advice and ran:
mysql_upgrade
and received this error:
mysql_upgrade: Got error: 2002: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) while connecting to the MySQL server
Upgrade process encountered error and will not continue.
Any ideas as to how to fix that?
Some other errors I noticed are:
[ERROR] Fatal error: Can't open and lock privilege tables: Table 'mysql.user' doesn't exist
[ERROR] Fatal error: Failed to initialize ACL/grant/time zones structures or failed to remove temporary table files.
[ERROR] Aborting
followed by a lot of lines of "shutting down plugin...(various)..." that ended in:
mysqld: Shutdown complete
Again, I am completely lost here?

Answer 1

After hours of trying out suggestions from various forum threads, such as:
Creating my.cnf files; or
Adjusting the MAMP php.ini file with extra code, or
Reinstalling MAMP again,or
Dumping the "ib_logfile.." files from the MAMP/db/mysql57 directory,
The only thing that finally resolved this for me was:
I suddenly remembered I copied all my working files to a backup.
so I checked the backup directories for MAMP/db/mysql57 and noticed there was a lot of content in there that for some reason was now missing from my live version,
so I deleted everything in the current MAMP/db/mysql57 directory and pasted all the backup items in.
Suddenly MAMP's MYSQL server lights up, the Startup page auto loads into my browser and I can run drush commands in my CLI and load the Drupal CMS again.
Happy Days!