Wednesday, June 13, 2012

How to reset MySQL password?

Following this procedure, you will disable access control on the MySQL server. All connexions will have a root access. It is a good thing to unplug your server from the network or at least disable remote access.

To reset your mysqld password just follow these instructions :
  • Stop the mysql demon process using this command :
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
  • Start the mysqld demon process using the --skip-grant-tables option with this command
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   sudo /usr/sbin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking &
Because you are not checking user privs at this point, it's safest to disable networking. In Dapper, /usr/bin/mysgld... did not work. However, mysqld --skip-grant-tables did.

  • start the mysql client process using this command

<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   mysql -u root
  • from the mysql prompt execute this command to be able to change any password
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
  • Then reset/update your password
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   SET PASSWORD FOR root@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');
  • If you have a mysql root account that can connect from everywhere, you should also do:
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpwd') WHERE User='root';
  • Alternate Method:
<![if !supportLists]>o                     
<![endif]>   USE mysql
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   UPDATE user SET Password = PASSWORD('newpwd')
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   WHERE Host = 'localhost' AND User = 'root';
  • And if you have a root account that can access from everywhere:
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   USE mysql
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   UPDATE user SET Password = PASSWORD('newpwd')
<![if !supportLists]>o                     <![endif]>   WHERE Host = '%' AND User = 'root';
For either method, once have received a message indicating a successful query (one or more rows affected), flush privileges:
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Then stop the mysqld process and relaunch it with the classical way:

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start
When you have completed all this steps ,you can easily access to your mysql server with the password you have set in the step before. An easy way to have a full control of your mysql server is phpmyadmin (www.phpmyadmin.net), software made in php that can give you a web interface that can be very usefull to people that havent got a lot of confidence with bash .To install phpmyadmin on you server you will need to have 4 things:
  • web server apache
  • php
  • mysql server/mysql client installed
  • php_mysql support for apache

  • All packages can be found browsing synaptic.