How do I find out my root MySQL password?

Question

I just installed MySQL on Ubuntu and the root user can\'t log in :)

How can I recover or find out my password? Using blank for password does not work.

Answer 1

MySQL 5.5 on Ubuntu 14.04 required slightly different commands as recommended here. In a nutshell:

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo /usr/sbin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking &
mysql -u root

And then from the MySQL prompt

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
SET PASSWORD FOR root@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');
UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpwd') WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

And the cited source offers an alternate method as well.