John's MySQL blog

If mysql says you can't login as root but you have definitely got the right password and you have just installed it for the first time, it can be a nuisance. Do the below as user root. My suggestion is: 1. If you have existing databases, and want to keep them, back them up with mysqldump.       mysqldump -u user_with_access -pPassword database_to_rescue > database_to_rescue.sql Assuming that you have at least one user account, e.g. "user_with_access", who can read the database called “database_to_rescue". 2. Erase the mysql directory and start over:       service mysql stop rm -rf /var/lib/mysql/* 3. Re-run mysqld initialisation to set the password to blank: mkdir -p /var/run/mysqld chown -R /var/run/mysqld chmod 777 /var/run/mysqld # you can change this back to 755 later mysqld --initialize-insecure --user=mysql If it says it can't find the socket in /var/run/mysqld, repeat the commands mkdir-chown above. 4. It will then set up mysql from scratch with a blank

 Warning: this will delete ALL your databases. After running this script it will let you automatically run mysql without a password (as root). Note this  is a security risk so do not run this on a production server. #!/bin/bash set -e # Function to remove MySQL and clean up remove_mysql() {     echo "Removing MySQL server and packages..."     sudo apt-get remove -y mysql-server mysql-client mysql-common     echo "Removing MySQL directories..."     sudo rm -rf /etc/mysql /var/lib/mysql /var/log/mysql /var/run/mysqld     # Clean up any residual packages and update package info     sudo apt-get autoremove -y     sudo apt-get clean } # Function to ensure MySQL configuration file exists ensure_mysql_config() {     if [ ! -f /etc/mysql/mysql.cnf ]; then         echo "Creating MySQL configuration file..."         echo "[client]" | sudo tee /etc/mysql/mysql.cnf         echo "user=root" | sudo tee -a /etc/mysql/mysql.cnf         echo "passw