Resetting root password in MySQL

This is taken directly from MySQL home page:

1. Log on to your system as the Unix user that the mysqld server runs as (for example, mysql).
2. Locate the .pid file that contains the server’s process ID. The exact location and name of this file depend on your distribution, host name, and configuration. Common locations are /var/lib/mysql/, /var/run/mysqld/, and /usr/local/mysql/data/. Generally, the file name has an extension of .pid and begins with either mysqld or your system’s host name.You can stop the MySQL server by sending a normal kill (not kill -9) to the mysqld process, using the path name of the .pid file in the following command:

   shell> kill `cat /mysql-data-directory/host_name.pid`

   Use backticks (not forward quotation marks) with the cat command. These cause the output of cat to be substituted into the kill command.

3. Create a text file containing the following statements. Replace the password with the password that you want to use.

   UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') WHERE User='root';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

   Write the  UPDATE and FLUSH statements each on a single line. The UPDATE statement resets the password for all root accounts, and the FLUSH statement tells the server to reload the grant tables into memory so that it notices the password change.

4. Save the file. For this example, the file will be named /home/me/mysql-init. The file contains the password, so it should not be saved where it can be read by other users.
5. Start the MySQL server with the special –init-file option:

   shell> mysqld_safe --init-file=/home/me/mysql-init &

   The server executes the contents of the file named by the –init-file option at startup, changing each root account password.

6. After the server has started successfully, delete /home/me/mysql-init.