Resetting forgotten phpmyadmin password

Question

I recently installed LAMP on Ubuntu 13.04(32-bit) but forgot my phpMyAdmin password. How can I reset its password without re-installing it?

Answer 1

Simply change or reset your MySQL root password by doing the following:

1. Stop the MySQL server

   sudo service mysql stop
   

2. Start mysqld

   sudo mysqld --skip-grant-tables &
   

3. Login to MySQL as root

   mysql -u root mysql
   

4. Change MYSECRET with your new root password

   UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('MYSECRET') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;
   

5. Kill mysqld

   sudo pkill mysqld
   

6. Start mysql

   sudo service mysql start
   

7. Login to phpmyadmin as root with your new password

Answer 2

You don't actually need to reset your username and password, if you can see them.

In your terminal window, type:

sudo -H gedit /etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf

This will open your phpmyadmin configurations.

There, you will see your username under dbc_dbuser='your_username' and password under dbc_dbpass='your_password'.

Answer 3

There is a workaround on Debian (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) where there is a second admin account automatically generated by the system called

debian-sys-maint

You can see (and should not change) its password via

sudo nano /etc/mysql/debian.cnf

It is possible (sure on Ubuntu 16.04) to use that account both in phpMyAdmin as well as in the command line

mysql -u debian-sys-maint -p

The account has exactly the same privileges as phpMyAdmin's / MySQL's root.

Answer 4

I was wondering why my login was failing even though I never changed the password.

It was failing because I rebootet the server and the mysql server was not startet automatically. So I startet the server and it worked again.