The full error is
Cannot select database
The database server could be connected to (which means your username and password is okay) but the database could not be selected.
What is actually wrong is that you don’t have a file wp-config.php
From what I gather, it used to be that wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz would bring in a .tar.gz file which contained wp-config.php. That file isn’t there any more in the source.
In the old scheme, the installer would modify it with the user name, password, database table name and then proceed with the rest of the installation.
If I had to guess, I’d guess the new scheme is supposed to do cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php and then the installation picks up as it did before (modifying it with the user name, password, database table name); then proceeding with the rest of the installation.
Someone got the idea that instead of maintaining two wp-config files, they could maintain and ship one, and then copy it during install. This is a good idea: makes the source a tiny bit smaller, saving storage and transfer bytes. Just one thing though: do the copy, stupid, and check your results. Err out in a rather ugly mess if you didn’t get the copy right – then at least you’d hear about it mightily if you got it wrong.
The solution is to manually copy the file, edit it with the user name, password, and database table name, and then try to install again, twice.
If you simply copy wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php and then run the install, it’s going to bark at you that wp-config.php already exists. Also, it is not going to ask you for the user name, password, and database table name. Since you already had to fuck around with the wp-config.php file, surely you already took care of the user name, password, and database table name.
So,
- start the install from scratch
- copy the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php
- edit the new file, supplying database table name, user name, and password
- start the install from scratch again and let it bark at you that the new file already exists
- click the try again link.
Finally the “famous five minute install” is done after you spent thirty minutes in frustration finding this post and not doing what the documentation says.
Personally, I think it is low quality programming to leave this bug in the basic install process. It’s been there for months. So, what? No-one at Automattic tests the installer any more?