Access denied for user 'user'@'localhost' on MySQL

Question

I'm trying connect me to database MySQL server but the console show me ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES) I don't know why. Please help me. In my file my.cnf I have something like this,

[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/tmp/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

# To allow mysqld to connect to a MySQL Cluster management daemon, uncomment
# these lines and adjust the connectstring as needed.
#ndbcluster
#ndb-connectstring="nodeid=4;host=localhost:3306"

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

[ndbd]
# If you are running a MySQL Cluster storage daemon (ndbd) on this machine,
# adjust its connection to the management daemon here.
# Note: ndbd init script requires this to include nodeid!
connect-string="nodeid=2;host=localhost:3306"

[ndb_mgm]
# connection string for MySQL Cluster management tool
connect-string="host=localhost:3306"

[client]
socket=/tmp/mysql.sock

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you really don't remember the pass anymore, you can add skip_grant_tables to [mysqld] section of your my.cnf, restart server, it will let you in without a password, then you can change password by updating mysql.user table and restart mysql removing the skip_grant_tables option.

Answer 2

The -p flag denotes the requirement for a password. There should be a second prompt after typing what you typed requesting the password. For example:

$ mysql -u root -p
$ Enter password: 

Then you type the password.