Resetting forgotten phpmyadmin password

Simply change or reset your MySQL root password by doing the following:

1. Stop the MySQL server

   sudo service mysql stop
   

2. Start mysqld

   sudo mysqld --skip-grant-tables &
   

3. Login to MySQL as root

   mysql -u root mysql
   

4. Change MYSECRET with your new root password

   UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('MYSECRET') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; exit;
   

5. Kill mysqld

   sudo pkill mysqld
   

6. Start mysql

   sudo service mysql start
   

7. Login to phpmyadmin as root with your new password

You don't actually need to reset your username and password, if you can see them.

In your terminal window, type:

sudo -H gedit /etc/dbconfig-common/phpmyadmin.conf

This will open your phpmyadmin configurations.

There, you will see your username under dbc_dbuser='your_username' and password under dbc_dbpass='your_password'.

There is a workaround on Debian (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) where there is a second admin account automatically generated by the system called

debian-sys-maint

You can see (and should not change) its password via

sudo nano /etc/mysql/debian.cnf

It is possible (sure on Ubuntu 16.04) to use that account both in phpMyAdmin as well as in the command line

mysql -u debian-sys-maint -p

The account has exactly the same privileges as phpMyAdmin's / MySQL's root.

I was wondering why my login was failing even though I never changed the password.

It was failing because I rebootet the server and the mysql server was not startet automatically. So I startet the server and it worked again.