From Newsgroup: comp.os.linux.misc

So I forgot what password I had set for the root user in MariaDB on my
VPS. By default, Debian should set things up so that, if you are
already logged in as root, a command like

mariadb -u root

should be sufficient to log you in with full root access, without
having to specify a password. This depends on using a Unix socket
connection, so the server can discover what credentials your process
possesses, and control access accordingly.

But this didnrCOt work (stopped working? never worked?) on my VPS for
some reason.

You can fix this by temporarily restarting mariadbd with the privilege
system turned off with the --skip-grant-tables option: this lets you
mess around inside the user privilege settings, and once you have
fixed them, you restart the server process in the normal way, and all
should be good.

The global user privileges (i.e. not database/table-specific) are
stored in the rCLglobal_privrCY table in the rCLmysqlrCY database. The rCLPrivrCY
field for each user is a JSON blob with a whole bunch of stuff mashed
together; I tried comparing this for the root@localhost entry with the
same record on my own machine (where I have no trouble accessing
databases as root), and narrowed the difference down to these specific
items in the blob:

DoesnrCOt work:

"plugin":"unix_socket"

Does work:

"plugin":"mysql_native_password",
"auth_or":[{},{"plugin":"unix_socket"}]

(Note there was no rCLauth_orrCY item in the other field value.)

So after delicately extracting the entire field value, doing the
necessary edits and setting it back again (Remember all those lectures
about avoiding unnormalized field values? This is why you should
listen to your elders), I tried restarting mariadb in regular privilege-enforcing mode ...

... and it worked.
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