Forgot MySQL root password

To recover a forgotten root password for MySQL

First, we need to stop the MySQL server process;

sudo service mysql stop

Start MySQLwith the following;

sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking

In another console, connect to the server as root;

mysql -u root

Once connected to the MySQL server, do;

use mysql;

update user set authentication_string=password('NEWPASSWORD') where user='root';

​mysql> flush privileges;

quit;

then kill the server with;

killall mysqld or kill -9 PID or something...

You can now restart the server properly with;

servicectl mysqld start or service mysqld start or /etc/rc.d/rc.mysqld start