access denied for user debian-sys-maint

Question

I have had problem with mysql. I tried to execute this:

echo "show databases" | mysql -B -N

But I got:

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'debian-sys-maint'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

But when I exec:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart 

I got an 'OK'.

I did

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on *.* TO debian-sys-maint@localhost IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'your password' WITH GRANT OPTION; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

where password is from /etc/mysql/debian.cnf. But it didn't help. (of course I flushed priv and restarted mysql).

Answer 1

That’s because Debian has a MySQL account debian-sys-maint used for switching on/off and checking status. The password for that user should be the same as stored in /etc/mysql/debian.cnf. The file looks like this:

# Automatically generated for Debian scripts. DO NOT TOUCH!
[client]
host     = localhost
user     = debian-sys-maint
password = <password>
socket   = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
[mysql_upgrade]
host     = localhost
user     = debian-sys-maint
password = <password>
socket   = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
basedir  = /usr

If the password doesn't match (for example because you changed it manually) the init script won't work anymore. You should set the password according to the file. So

mysql -u root -p
# Then type MySQL root password
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'debian-sys-maint'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';