Question

Issues with setting password for MySQL root user during LAMP setup

Hello,

I am having issues setting up MySQL on a fresh droplet running Ubuntu 20.04.

I have been following the tutorial and have reached the sudo mysql_secure_installation step. I have tried setting the password for the root user with the VALIDATE PASSWORD PLUGIN enabled and without, but both return the following error: Failed! Error: SET PASSWORD has no significance for user ‘root’@‘localhost’ as the authentication method used doesn’t store authentication data in the MySQL server. Please consider using ALTER USER instead if you want to change authentication parameters.

I have done this process multiple times on other projects using Ubuntu 20.04 and MySQL 8.0, but for some reason today it is not working.

Any ideas on where I am going wrong?

Cheers,

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KFSys • May 9, 2022
Accepted Answer

Hi @mikehermary,

You need to change the authentication parameters. To do so run this command in MySQL:

  1. ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password by 'mynewpassword';

Afterwards you should be able to run

  1. sudo mysql_secure_installation

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