How do I change the temporary root MySQL password using a bash shell script?

Question

I need to change the temporary root password that is created when the MySQL daemon is started. The problem is that the temporary password has some weird characters (e.g. like a left/right parenthesis) that needs to be escaped. Now, there are several posts (here, here, here) on how to escape characters, in general, but this post is in the context of using a bash script to change the temporary MySQL root password that may have special characters.

Currently, my script looks like the following.

function startMysql {
    sudo service mysqld start
    echo "started mysql"

    export PW=$(grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log | awk '{print $11}')
    # export PASS=\'$PW\'
    echo "temporary password is $PW"
    mysqladmin -u root -p$PW password aaBB@@cc1122
    # the following doesn't work either
    # mysqladmin -u root -p$PASS password aaBB@@cc1122
    echo "changed mysql password"
}

Note that the temporary password may look like the following.

BYkc*),ZM3-_

If I type in the following on the terminal, it works.

mysqladmin -u root -p'BYkc*),ZM3-_' password aaBB@@cc1122

But inside the script, it fails. Here are some ways that I have tried to put single quotes around $PW without success.

mysqladmin -u root -p"'$PW'" password aaBB@@cc1122
mysqladmin -u root -p\''$PW'\' password aaBB@@cc1122
mysqladmin -u root -p"$PW" password aaBB@@cc1122
mysqladmin -u root -p"\"$PW\"" password aaBB@@cc1122

Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

What does echo "temporary password is $PW" give you? mysqladmin -u root -p"$PW" password aaBB@@cc1122 should work just fine. — miken32
– miken32, Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 5:37
the echo to the console shows as correct. but I still get authentication failure as if I passed in the wrong password. — Jane Wayne
– Jane Wayne, Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 3:03

BenMorel · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-22 23:03:59Z

2

It does work for me using double-quotes:

password=$(grep 'temporary password' /var/log/mysqld.log | awk '{print $11}')
mysqladmin --user=root --password="$password" password aaBB@@cc1122

answered Aug 22, 2017 at 23:03

BenMorel

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