I've just installed MySQL on my home machine to work along with the
manual _Agile Web Development with Rails_. I'm absolutely new to MySQL
and have encountered the following error after the command
mysql -u root -p:

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

During installation I never set a password. I've input 'admin', 'root'
and other guesses in as the password - the error is always the same.
If I provide a carriage return without entering anything, the error
changes slightly:

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO) 

I've posted this question elsewhere, and have found/recieved some
interesting feedback - but I have absolutely no background in MySQL or
the command line. I'm looking for absolutely thorough and remedial
steps for remedying this problem on a Mac running 10.4.6.

---

Clarification of Question by boombot-ga on 08 May 2006 19:09 PDT

I'm running MySQL 4.1.18-standard.

If you didnt set a password then you should be able to just use -u
without -p. In fact, I think ruby on rails might require this, but I
don't remember exactly.

hello boombot-ga,

MySQl has great documentation. The docs specifically address your
question and is a common error. Without knowing your version of
MySQL..

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/access-denied.html

"#

If you try to connect as root and get the following error, it means
that you do not have an row in the user table with a User column value
of 'root' and that mysqld cannot resolve the hostname for your client:

Access denied for user ''@'unknown' to database mysql

In this case, you must restart the server with the --skip-grant-tables
option and edit your /etc/hosts file or \windows\hosts file to add an
entry for your host."

so..you can get to your terminal and issue
cat /etc/hosts

and make sure "127.0.0.1     localhost   $the hostname"   is in there,
(where $the hostname is the name of your machine, ie..xyz.foo.com, or
xyz) if not

as root issue
shell> echo "127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain $hostname" >>/etc/hosts

to start mysql with the --skip-grant-tables option **i think, not too
familar with macs**

shell> /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld --skip-grant-tables


then you can try to get into mysql with
shell> mysql -u root mysql or shell> mysql -u root test

The document listed above should be able to answer the rest of your questions

good day

linux-ga's post is helpful, but my specific error doesn't seem to be
dealt with in the document, but only in the comments.