This is vastly OT but hey, it happened to me just this month! It IS in the docs:

A.4.2 How to Reset a Forgotten Password

If you have forgotten the root user password for MySQL, you can restore it with the following procedure:

1. Take down the mysqld server by sending a kill (not kill -9) to the mysqld server. The pid is stored in a .pid file, which is normally in the MySQL database directory:
   

   kill `cat /mysql-data-directory/hostname.pid`

   
   You must be either the Unix root user or the same user the server runs as to do this.
2. Restart mysqld with the --skip-grant-tables option.
3. Connect to the mysqld server with mysql -h hostname mysql and change the password with a GRANT command. See section 4.3.1 GRANT and REVOKE Syntax. You can also do this with mysqladmin -h hostname -u user password 'new password'
4. Load the privilege tables with: mysqladmin -h hostname flush-privileges or with the SQL command FLUSH PRIVILEGES.

Note that after you started mysqld with --skip-grant-tables, any usage of GRANT commands will give you an Unknown command error until you have executed FLUSH PRIVILEGES.

-Nitrox

You can do it using SQL to update the mysql database user table which is where the password lives. You can also use GRANT. You can also use mysqladmin as a system call to change passwords. Other than that it can't be done ;-) It is all in the extensive mysql docs for those inclined to RTM.

Recovering from a lost root password is discussed below

cheers

tachyon

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