posted May 16, 2000 03:22 AM            

18.9 How to reset a forgotten password.

If you have forgotten the root user password for MySQL, you can restore it with the following procedure.

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:
kill `cat /mysql-data-directory/hostname.pid`
You must be either the UNIX root user or the same user the server runs as to do this.
Restart mysqld with the --skip-grant-tables option.
Connect to the mysqld server with mysql -h hostname mysql and change the password with a GRANT command. See section 7.26 GRANT and REVOKE syntax. You can also do this with mysqladmin -h hostname -u user password 'new password'
Load the privilege tables with: mysqladmin -h hostname flush-privileges or with the SQL command FLUSH PRIVILEGES.