Resetting a forgotten MySQL root password

Resetting the root password of a MySQL database is trivial if you know the current password if you don't it is a little tricker. Thankfully it isn't too difficult to fix, and here we'll show one possible way of doing so.

If you've got access to the root account already, because you know the password, you can change it easily:

user@system:~$ mysql --user=root --pass mysql
Enter password:

mysql> update user set Password=PASSWORD('new-password-here') WHERE User='root';
Query OK, 2 rows affected (0.04 sec)
Rows matched: 2 Changed: 2 Warnings: 0

mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> exit
Bye