Have you ever forgotten the root password on one of your MySQL servers? No? Well maybe I’m not as perfect as you. This is a quick h00tow (how to) reset your MySQL root password. It does require root access on your server. If you have forgotten that password wait for another article.


First things first. Log in as root and stop the mysql daemon. Now lets start up the mysql daemon and skip the grant tables which store the passwords.

mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables

You should see mysqld start up successfully. If not, well you have bigger issues. Now you should be able to connect to mysql without a password.

mysql --user=root mysql
update user set Password=PASSWORD('new-password');
flush privileges;
exit

Now kill your running mysqld, then restart it normally. You should be good to go. Try not to forget your password again.

Last Modified : April 6th, 2008 Filed under : administration, howto Navigate : Previous post / Next post