title: What is the benefit to running MySQL on MAMP on port 3306?
body: <p>I've had a lot of problems trying to get MySQL installed on my Mac, so I caved and installed MAMP.</p>
  
  <p>MAMP sets its versions of Apache and MySQL to use ports 8888 and 8889. A lot of the MAMP tutorials <a href="http://seansperte.com/entry/Setting_Up_a_Killer_Local_Web_Development_Environment_on_a_Mac_with_MAMP_an/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">(such as this one)</a> mention that you should set MAMP's Apache and MySQL ports to their defaults of 80 and 3306, but they don't mention why (besides <a href="http://localhost:8888/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://localhost:8888/</a> becoming <a href="http://localhost" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://localhost</a>).</p>
  
  <p>Apache and MySQL seem to start fine using MAMP's defaults, and I am able to get Apache to start under port 80, but MySQL won't start when I try to set it to port 3306. I think this has something to do with a phantom installation of MySQL that I tried to install and scrapped (but I could be wrong).</p>
  
  <p>Do you foresee problems with the fact that I may be running a phantom instance of MySQL, or is this a separate issue? Will it be important to set MySQL to run under 3306, or should I just leave it at 8889 and move on?</p>