mysql database won't allow tcp connections on localhost at the default port

Trying to connect to a database with a c++ program. I am using the [mysqlcppconnector](https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/cpp/) with the connection strings tcp://localhost:3306 and tcp://127.0.0.1:3306. The program works on my local machine, but when I try to run it on my remote ubuntu server after ssh'ing in, it complains: terminate called after throwing an instance of 'sql::SQLException' what(): Unknown MySQL server host 'tcp' (2) I'm just trying to connect on localhost, at the default port 3306. I can also connect manually by typing in mysql -u root -p and just logging in that way. After logging in to my database with mysql -u root -p, I can type show variables; and indeed I see skip-networking set to "OFF". MySQL is listening on the network: netstat -a | grep mysql tcp 0 0 localhost:mysql 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20025 /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock Is there some configuration that I forgot to change? What does the "(2)" mean?