The order of solutions here under gets more creative on the way down :)

1. obviously, before starting messing around check my.cnf or scripts for passwords entries, then try home directories for password files
2. secondly – can you restart mysql? if yes, restart with –skip-grant-tables, log into mysql, change your password and restart without –skip-grant-tables
3. third option – (on linux / unix ONLY)
If you haven’t found the password anywhere and can’t afford to restart your mysql.

cd data/mysql
cp -rp user.MYD bck_user.MYD_`date +%Y%m%d`
cp -rp user.MYD /tmp/user.MYD
vi /tmp/user.MYD #(edit the hashed passwords next to root*)
cp -rp /tmp/user.MYD user.MYD
sudo kill -HUP `pidof mysqld`

Note that the latter method of recovering a root password CAN be easily used maliciously leaving no trace! The only way to avoid such an attack is to make the data directory ONLY readable and writable by the user used to start/stop mysql (don’t user *nix root user to own mysql since that opens another can of worms … it’s a whole other blog post).

It is especially useful to dump stored procedures separately since it is a lacking functionality in mysqldump.

I placed the script in mysql forge for anybody to use, provide feedback and possibly enhancements to it.

Create an expect script:
/path/to/sshmysql.exp

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
#script by darren cassar
#mysqlpreacher.com

set machine [lindex $argv 0]

set timeout -1

spawn ssh username@$machine
match_max 100000
expect -exact “assword: “
send — “password\r”
send — “sudo -k; sudo su – mysql\r”
expect -exact “sudo -k; sudo su – mysql”
expect -exact “assword:”
send — “password\r”
interact

# you should change the word password in ‘send — “password\r”‘ to your login password
# if you have the same password for each environment you could also script logging into mysql directly from the same expect script BUT that is not recommended.

Create a bash script:
/path/to/login.sh

#!/bin/bash
#script by darren cassar
#mysqlpreacher.com

sm=’/path/to/sshmysql.exp’

menu() {
echo ” 101 – dev.databaseserver1 “
echo ” 102 – dev.databaseserver2 “
echo ” 103 – dev.databaseserver3 “
echo ” 201 – qa.databaseserver1 “
echo ” 301 – uat.databaseserver1 “
echo ” 302 – uat.databaseserver2 “
echo ” 401 – prod.databaseserver1 “
echo ” “
}

ARGUMENT=notmenu

if [ -z "$1" ]
then
ARGUMENT=menu
else
choice=$1
fi

if [ $ARGUMENT = "menu" ]
then
menu
else
case “$choice” in
101|dev.databaseserver1 ) $sm dev.databaseserver1;;
102|dev.databaseserver2 ) $sm dev.databaseserver2;;
103|dev.databaseserver3 ) $sm dev.databaseserver3;;
201|qa.databaseserver1 ) $sm qa.databaseserver1;;
301|uat.databaseserver1 ) $sm uat.databaseserver1;;
302|uat.databaseserver2 ) $sm uat.databaseserver2;;
401|prod.databaseserver1 ) $sm prod.databaseserver1;;
* ) echo “Wrong value passed to script”
menu ;;
esac
fi

alias l=’/path/to/login.sh’

Output:

[darrencassar@mymachine ~ ]$ l
101 – dev.databaseserver1
102 – dev.databaseserver2
103 – dev.databaseserver3
201 – qa.databaseserver1
301 – uat.databaseserver1
302 – uat.databaseserver2
401 – prod.databaseserver1

Output:
The below command would log you into the first development database server as mysql user.

[darrencassar@mymachine ~ ]$ l 101

On each machine place aliases for each instance in the .profile

alias use3306=’mysql -u root -p -h 127.0.0.1 -P 3306 –prompt=”mysql \D> “‘

The above setup can be used using any client/server OS: Linux, Solaris, MAC OS or Windows(running Cygwin)

NOTE: If you store the password in clear text inside the expect script, you should at least save the scripts inside an encrypted partition on your machine and make sure that folder is not shared or accessible by anyone. Another way of doing it would be to use either SSHKeys OR save the password inside a file and encrypt it using OpenSSL

Enjoy!

In essence:
1. Select Finder, click on Go from the menu bar and select Go to Folder
2. From the dialog box that opens, type:
/System/Library/CoreServices/
and press Return
3. Locate Finder application, right click on it, and select Show Package Contents
4. Navigate to Contents>Resources>English.lproj and open InfoPlist.strings in a text editor
5. Navigate to the line which says
“Folder” = “Folder”;
at around line 7 of the file, and simply add an empty space or a symbol (such as “.” or “~”) in front of the second “Folder”.
6. Save the text file, type in the Administrator password when asked, and close the text file.
7. The final step would be to restart finder, which you can achieve by holding in the ALT or OPTION key and right clicking on the Finder icon in Dock, then selecting Relaunch.

Full detailed tutorial can be found here: thanks to “Budding”

It seems this user can’t connect to the mysql gets access denied:
Access denied for user ‘user’@'machine_bbbbb’ (using password: YES)

Note that the machine the user is being seen from is totally different from the one I set up in the grant!! WHY?

run a reverse lookup on the ip of machine_aaaaa, turns out it shows machine_bbbbb. So I figure a big bad guy messed up /etc/hosts, I was right! `cat /etc/hosts` just to find an entry for machine_aaaaa blehh

Ok, solution is to remove the entry from /etc/hosts (after finding out it wasn’t even necessary and wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place), restart nscd.

Retry
AGAIN – Access denied for user ‘user’@'machine_bbbbb’ (using password: YES)

What the ….

What’s wrong now? — yeah silly me forgot to `flush hosts` :)

Retry
YOHOO I’m in!

I’ve seen quite a few blogs about disabling name resolve in mysql with skip-name-resolve and granting privileges using IPs – something which would also have avoided the above (but still not found the root of the problem):

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/011421.html
http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2008/05/31/dns-achilles-heel-mysql-installation/