Can't login to mysql as root user even though I have the password

Posted on May 5, 2020

I followed this tutorial on how to set up phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-18-04

In step 2 I’m trying to log in to mysql using the command sudo mysql but I get the error message Access denied for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ (using password: NO)

I’ve also tried logging in with the root user using the root_mysql_pass located in /root/.digitalocean_password but I get the error message Access denied for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ (using password: YES)

I’m able to log in as the user wordpress with the password wordpress_mysql_pass.

Does anyone know what’s causing this or how to solve it? Any help I can get is very much appreciated!

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Bobby Iliev

May 5, 2020

Accepted Answer

Hi there @maxRay,

It looks like that the MySQL password that you are trying to use is not correct. In case that you’ve lost the MySQL root password I could suggest following the steps from this tutorial here on how to reset your MySQL root password:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-reset-your-mysql-or-mariadb-root-password

Hope that this helps! Regards, Bobby