Forgotten / lost MySQL root password

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Forgotten / lost MySQL root password

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-05-16 14:10:09 - Graham Ellis
OK - I admit it. A very silly thing to do. I had lost / forgotten my MySQL password, and needed to do some admin work.

1. Log in to server as root

2. Stop the database server
/etc/init.d mysql.server stop

3. Start the database server without password check
/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables

4. Manually change the grant tables

  /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -uroot

  use mysql;

  update user set password=PASSWORD("newpasswordhere") where user="root";

  flush privileges;

  quit

5. logout (which nicely kills the backgrounded daemon)

6. Log in as root again

7. Restart the server normally
/etc/init.d mysql.server stop

8 Logout