Sockets confuse me: how to troubleshoot?

check that the file exists:
ls -l ~/cardano-node/relay/db/node.socket
the result should begin with ‘s’
srwxr-xr-x 1 user group 0 Apr 30 07:59 node.socket

if exists then list the processes which using this socket file:

$ lsof storage/node.socket
COMMAND    PID USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF     NODE NAME
cardano-n 6012   user   27u  unix 0x0000000000000000      0t0 31984423 storage/node.socket type=STREAM