Recovering and Changing Your MySQL Root Password

Sometimes you may have to recover the MySQL root password because it was either forgotten or misplaced. The steps you need are:

1. Stop MySQL: as root

service mysqld stop

2.Start MySQL in Safe mode with the safe_mysqld command and tell it not to read the grant tables with all the MySQL database passwords:

safe_mysqld --skip-grant-tables &
[1] 4815
Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /var/lib/mysql

3.Use the mysqladmin command to reset the root password. In this case, you are setting it to

thisisthepassword

mysqladmin -u root flush-privileges password "thisisthepassword"

4.Restart MySQL normally:

service mysqld restart
Stopping MySQL: 040517 09:39:38 mysqld ended
[ OK ]
Starting MySQL: [ OK ]
[1]+ Done safe_mysqld --skip-grant-tables

The MySQL root user will now be able to manage MySQL using this new password.