Category: Tutorial

How to reset your `root` password on your MySQL server

You don’t need this tutorial if you have access to the root user or another one with SUPER and GRANT privileges.

The following instructions works for MySQL 5.7. You will need to stop the MySQL server and start it with mysqld_safe with the option skip-grant-tables:

sudo service mysql stop
sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
mysql -u root mysql

If you get an error on start, chances are there is no folder created for the mysqld_safe executable to run, on my tests I was able to solve by doing:

sudo mkdir /var/run/mysqld
sudo chown -R mysql:mysql /var/run/mysqld

And then trying to start the mysqld_safe process again.

After this, the MySQL console will pop up, and you need to set up a new password for root. The second line is necessary due to a MySQL bug #79027:

UPDATE mysql.user SET authentication_string=PASSWORD('mypassword') WHERE User='root';
UPDATE mysql.user SET plugin="mysql_native_password" WHERE User='root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Once finished, kill all MySQL processes and start the service again:

ps aux | grep mysql
sudo kill -9 [pid]
sudo service mysql start

Done, you have reset the root password! Make sure to keep it safe this time around!

See something wrong in this tutorial? Please don’t hesitate to message me through the comments or the contact page.

How to use MySQL 8.0.4 with a GUI

If you want to have a look on what is about to come in the new version of the popular database and is used to Syntax Highlighting you don’t need to be chained to the Terminal.

Some of you may use tools like MySQL Workbench or Sequel Pro (as of the release of this post both tools had the following error occurring), and even if you are using the Terminal (if you are using an old version of mysql, like 5.7) you may encounter this error:

Unable to connect to host 127.0.0.1, or the request timed out.

Be sure that the address is correct and that you have the necessary privileges, or try increasing the connection timeout (currently 10 seconds).

MySQL said: Authentication plugin ‘caching_sha2_password’ cannot be loaded: dlopen(/usr/local/lib/plugin/caching_sha2_password.so, 2): image not found

The reason for that is because since the 8.0.4 RC release, MySQL now uses SHA-2 Pluggable Authentication. In another words, how the database does authentication now changed.

Graphical User Interface

As of now, the only tool I could verify that it is working is Datagrip. But there is some steps to make sure you can successfully connect to the server. Follow the steps

1. The JDBC Connector

Open the JDBC Connector page. Click on “Development Releases” tab and select your operating system, as of this post 8.0.9 was the latest version.
Select the zip version of the file, if you are using macOS, select “Platform Independent”.
The website it will ask for you to login, you don’t need to login, there is a link on the bottom of the page that says: “No thanks, just start my download.”.
Unzip the zip file mysql-connector-java-8.0.9-rc.zip (the name may be different for you if the version is different)
A folder will be created with the name of the compressed file, inside copy the jar file to a location where you can access it later easily, for example, I put mine in ~/workspace/drivers folder.

2. The GUI configuration

Open Datagrip. Go to “File > Data Sources“. A window will open, right click on top of the “MySQL” name and select Duplicate.
A new Driver is added with the name “MySQL [2]”, rename it to “MySQL 8.0”
Then, unselect “Use” on “Driver Files” and click on the + sign. Select the jar file you downloaded on the previous section.
Click in Apply.

3. Adding the source

On the same window, click on the + sign on the top left. Select “MySQL 8.0”
Fill out the details as you would for a connection:
Click on “Test Connection“.
If everything worked, just click in “OK” to exit the screen.

Transferring ownership of repositories on GitHub

For the past couple months, I’ve been studying. As a side effect, my GitHub account was cluttered with code that is experimental. I didn’t exactly want to trash the experimental code. I wanted to keep my code but also not specifically keep it under my profile.

The solution I found was to create an organization and transfer my desired repositories there. I thought this was a great solution, there was just one little detail I was missing: the current GitHub API does not support repository ownership transfer. Which meant I would have to go to each repository, click on “Settings”, click on “Transfer”, fill in the “Repository Name” and then put the “Destination User”. A lot of steps for someone looking to move over 250 repositories.

The first thing that came to my mind was to use Selenium to automate this task. But my lack of exposure with the technology made me think a bit outside the box. One of the things I learned these past months was capybara. Capybara is used alongside Rspec, extending the test suite DSL. It mimics user interaction with the browser and comes with a Selenium driver out of the box.

In other words, you can create a bot to go to the browser, fill up forms and submit it. This is exactly what I was looking for. As I stated before, Capybara uses Rspec, so my code would actually have to be wrapped inside a test.

Caveats

You need to disable two-factor authentication on GitHub, and after the script finishes running set it back on.
It does not transfer private repositories.
You need Mozilla’s geckodriver installed. If you use macOS, you can use brew to install it.

The Script

This was developed as a hack. Use at your own risk. You can download it at gabidavila/github-move-repositories. As of now this code gets all public repositories, unless the variable ONLY_FORKS is set to TRUE, and moves to a destination user. Do not push your .env file.If you want to move only specific repositories, you will need to edit the code yourself. For more information the README.md of this project is kept up to date.

Contributions are welcome if you feel you can help improve the tool. For example: add options of which repositories to move.

Enjoy!