Monit is configured to watch MySQL on localhost at port 3306.

check process mysqld with pidfile /var/lib/mysql/li175-241.pid
  start program = "/etc/init.d/mysql start"
  stop program = "/etc/init.d/mysql stop"
  if failed port 3306 protocol mysql then restart
  if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

My application, which is configured to connect to MySQL via localhost:3306, is running just fine and can access the database. I can even use MySQL Query Browser to connect to the database remotely via port 3306. The port is totally open and possible to connect to. Therefore, I'm pretty darn certain that it's running.

However, running monit -v reveals that Monit cannot detect MySQL on that port.

'mysqld' failed, cannot open a connection to INET[localhost:3306] via TCP

This happens consistently, until Monit decides not to track MySQL anymore, as configured.

How can I begin to troubleshoot this issue?