You tried a dozen different howtos to change the root password of MySQL (5.7+) in a recent Ubuntu version (18.04+) and did not succeed? Like the one I posted in 2013?

The reason these guides do not work is simple: root access through password is disabled and thus changing the password has no effect. You can find more details here.

So how the heck can we access the database? On the console, you can login to MySQL as root without a password like this:

sudo mysql

If you need root access from another application, like phpMyAdmin, the best way is to add a new user like myroot that has all privileges and a password. To do so, login as root in the console (sudo mysql) and then create the new user like this (adjust new_password to something more secure):

CREATE USER 'myroot'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'myroot'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
CREATE USER 'myroot'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'new_passord';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'myroot'@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

Now you can login from any application using the username myroot and the password new_password . On the console:

mysql -u myroot -p
Enter password: new_password

Hope this helps somebody who is in the same situation like me.

If this made your day, please drop a comment.