Adding a MySQL user when no MySQL users have admin rights https://serverfault.com/questions/264170/adding-a-mysql-user-when-no-mysql-users-have-admin-rights There is something interesting to note about MySQL when using skip-grant-tables. Once you restart mysqld with skip-grant-tables, you cannot use GRANT and REVOKE commands. Option 1) UPDATE password for root@localhost; You could do this: UPDATE mysql.user SET password=PASSWORD('whateverpasswordyouwant') WHERE user='root' and host='localhost'; then restart mysqld. Option 2) You could INSERT a record directly into mysql.user. If you want to establish a new user for your self called superuser, you must do the following (this works for MySQL 5.5): INSERT INTO mysql.user SET Host = 'localhost', User = 'superuser', Password = PASSWORD('whateverpasswordyouwant'), Select_priv = 'Y', ...