xwisdom made a mistake in his comment and got it backwards, correction below:
If you are having problems accessing a remote MYSQL database, the solution is to make sure that you add a white-space after "mysql:"
Change this...:
mysql:host=remote;
...to this:
mysql: host=remote;
See original solution here:
http://stackoverflow.com/a/25432156