When I run that command, I get:
mysqladmin: connect to server at 'localhost' failed error: 'Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (111)'
Check that mysqld is running and that the socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' exists!
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I can not locate mysqld.sock either so I will have to find out where my host has that info or where I can find it, nothing seems like it is located in a standard location, oh joy.

Here is my current my.cnf settings:
set-variable = max_connections=200
set-variable = join_buffer=1M
set-variable = sort_buffer=4M
set-variable = thread_cache_size=8
set-variable = table_cache=1024
set-variable = key_buffer=512M
set-variable = max_connect_errors=10000
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=1M
set-variable = record_buffer=2M
It is runing quicker than it ever has I think but still getting locked files so not quite there yet, maybe drop table_cache down to 512 and see how it does.