Change MySQL Root Password for SMT

This document (7001726) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2

Subscription Management Tool (SMT)

Situation

The MySQL root password has become corrupted, and SMT will not start up correctly. This is seen when trying an 'rcsmt restart':

Restarting service MySQL

Shutting down service MySQL

Shutting down CRON daemon

Starting CRON daemon

DBIx::Transaction connect('database=smt;host=localhost','smt',...) failed: Access denied for user 'smt'@'localhost' (using password: YES) at /usr/lib/SMT/bin/smt-db line 57

Database initialization failed. Try to run '/usr/lib/SMT/bin/smt-db setup' .

When user then tries to run the 'smt-db setup' command, this error shows up:

mysql password for user root:

Cannot connect to database: DBI connect('database=;host=localhost','root',...) failed: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES) at /usr/lib/SMT/bin/smt-db line 244

Furthermore, using the Yast2 GUI tool for SMT, trying to change the password for the mysql database user will fail, as the root password is needed.

Resolution

The following commands should allow us to reset the corrupted root password. Run these from a terminal or SSH session to the server (you need to be root to run these commands):

rcsmt stop

rcmysql stop

mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &

That last command should start up the mysql service allowing us to now login to MySQL while skipping any security checks.

mysql --user=root mysql

This command should now place us at a mysql> prompt.

UPDATE user SET Password=PASSWORD('newpwd') WHERE User='root';

flush privileges;

exit;

After the UPDATE command, we should now see a message that the query was ok, and 2 rows were affected and changed. Also, substitute your own new root password for newpwd. We must now kill the still running mysql processes. You can run either 'pkill mysql', or 'ps aux | grep mysql', look for the thread numbers, and then 'kill xxxx', where xxxx represents the thread # of the mysql processes.

At this point, we should be able to now start the smt service back up, and have it load and work correctly (rcsmt start). If that doesn't work, try running the 'smt-db setup' command again, as we now know the root password.

Disclaimer

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