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.

1. 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.
2. Restart mysqld with the --skip-grant-tables option.
3. Connect to the mysqld server with mysql -h hostname mysql and change the password with a GRANT command. GRANT. You can also do this with mysqladmin -h hostname -u user password 'new password'
4. Load the privilege tables with: mysqladmin -h hostname flush-privileges or with the SQL command FLUSH PRIVILEGES.