Unable to update the root password for MySQL — my.cnf is protected

Question

I'm unable to update the root password for MySQL. On MAC OSX

my.cnf seems to be protected, even after using sudo open -t my.cnf it still doesn't allow saving of the config file.

The message when saving is

This document could not be autosaved because you don’t have write access privileges to the folder that it’s in.

We had it working and Xampp leaves a blank root password, but after changing it in phpmyadmin, and rebooting, we now have no privileges when returning to phpmyadmin.

XAMPP's Status page says the password is set.

We were trying to figure out how to access MySQL in terminal but couldn't work it out.

Answer 1

The password has nothing to do with my.cnf.

MySQL has a data dictionary, where user accounts are stored. The default MySQL sysadmin account is named 'root'. There are actually two different ways to reset the root account password in windows:

1. Making a script that gets run at startup using a command line option
2. Setting a command line option that tells MySQL not to implement security at all, which allows you to login, change the password and then restart it

Both methods are documented in step-by-step fashion here:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/resetting-permissions.html#resetting-permissions-windows