I have seen this same question in many forms on this site and in many other forums. However, I have tried all the solutions and still have the same outcome. I’m pretty sure I once had root access on this MySQL server in the past and I was even able to use the phpMyAdmin tool to create databases amongst others queries. Now when I go to phpMyAdmin and click on databases I am greeted by:

If I use the command tool I can login using:
mysql -u root -p
I get prompted to enter a password and I do so. When I try to do anything else, say:
mysql> SELECT user, host FROM mysql.user;
I get the following:
ERROR 1142 (42000): SELECT command denied to user 'root'@'localhost' for table 'user'
I have also followed this article ( http://benrobb.com/2007/01/15/howto-remote-root-access-to-mysql/ ) since yes I am ssh’ing to this MySQL server from a remote machine. Again, when I attempt:
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION;
In various forms, I am greeted by a nasty:
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)
Even though I am putting the same password I used to login! I also want to mention that I updated my pear resources yesterday and I wonder if this was the cause of this mess…
If anyone can guide me, I’d truly appreciate it. Thank you for all your time and consideration.
Elshae
****Update****
In trying to troubleshoot and running mysqld I now cannot start the server back up! Every time I run:
/etc/init.d/mysql start
Starting MySQL database server: mysqld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . failed!
What should I do?
I appreciate everyone’s feedback, I finally got it for the most part. To combat the issue of
I did:
Which gave me:
then I did:
After that I was able to start up MySQL with:
From there I found this article:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MysqlPasswordReset and the magic for me there was:
I was able to follow the thread and also did:
The only thing that’s a bit strange is that the root still does not have the right to create databases from phpMyAdmin amongst other privileges that the root needs. However, I am able to create databases from the command line and for now I can live with that!
Thanks again everyone for your time and all the help!