Three ways to recover a root user password:

The order of solutions here under gets more creative on the way down :)

1. obviously, before starting messing around check my.cnf or scripts for passwords entries, then try home directories for password files
2. secondly – can you restart mysql? if yes, restart with –skip-grant-tables, log into mysql, change your password and restart without –skip-grant-tables
3. third option – (on linux / unix ONLY)
If you haven’t found the password anywhere and can’t afford to restart your mysql.

cd data/mysql
cp -rp user.MYD bck_user.MYD_`date +%Y%m%d`
cp -rp user.MYD /tmp/user.MYD
vi /tmp/user.MYD #(edit the hashed passwords next to root*)
cp -rp /tmp/user.MYD user.MYD
sudo kill -HUP `pidof mysqld`

Note that the latter method of recovering a root

Disclaimer:

This post is for educational purposes only and no responsibility will be taken if you execute any of the commands. You mess it, you fix it!

Replacing a password for a user on MySQL can be done in at least four ways. Three ways at least.

1. set password for ‘user’@'host’=password(‘abc’);

2. grant usage on *.* to ‘user’@'host’ identified by ‘abc’;

3. update mysql.user set password=password(‘abc’) where user=’user’ and host=’host’;

mysql Wed Mar  9 14:27:17 2011 > set password for 'dc'@'%' = password('d');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql Wed Mar  9 14:27:39 2011 > show grants for 'dc'@'%';
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for dc@%