If you’re getting the following error in phpmyadmin when creating a new database:

#1006 – Can’t create database

The problem is that /var/lib/mysql is probably owned by root, and ALSO in the root group. It should not be.

ls -ld /var/lib/mysql probably looks like this:

drwxrwxr-x 4 root root 4096 2010-11-01 23:45 /var/lib/mysql

It should be:

drwxrwxr-x 4 root mysql 4096 2010-11-01 23:45 /var/lib/mysql

So, run

chgrp -R mysql /var/lib/mysql

and you should be able to create databases now.