Chapter 174. How to Reset a Forgotten Root Password

If you never set a root password for MySQL, then the server will not require a password at all for connecting as root. It is recommended to always set a password for each user. See Security.

If you have set a root password, but forgot what it was, you can set a new password with the following procedure:

  1. Take down the mysqld server by sending a kill (not kill -9) to the mysqld server. The pid is stored in a .pid file, which is normally in the MySQL database directory:

      shell> kill `cat /mysql-data-directory/hostname.pid`
      

    You must be either the Unix root user or the same user mysqld runs as to do this.

  2. Restart mysqld with the --skip-grant-tables option.

  3. Set a new password with the mysqladmin password command:

      shell> mysqladmin -u root password "mynewpassword"
      

  4. Now you can either stop mysqld and restart it normally, or just load the privilege tables with:

      shell> mysqladmin -h hostname flush-privileges
      

  5. After this, you should be able to connect using the new password.

Alternatively, you can set the new password using the mysql client:

  1. Take down and restart mysqld with the --skip-grant-tables option as described above.

  2. Connect to the mysqld server with:

      shell> mysql -u root mysql
      

  3. Issue the following commands in the mysql client:

      mysql> UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('mynewpassword')
          ->             WHERE User='root';
      mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
      

  4. After this, you should be able to connect using the new password.

  5. You can now stop mysqld and restart it normally.