Based on these instructions. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/resetting-permissions.html.
Just cut and paste the following into a terminal to reset MySQL root password to ‘newpass123’
# stop existing service sudo service mysql stop; # start without access control sudo mysqld --skip-grant-tables & # wait until started sleep 5; # reset password echo "UPDATE mysql.user SET password=PASSWORD('newpass123') WHERE user='root';FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" | mysql -h localhost; # stop insecure instance sudo killall -9 mysqld; # start proper service sudo service mysql start;