Reset WordPress admin password

First, you need to be logged in with administrator rights to your MySQL. This is required in order to use the MySQL command line tool. The WordPress SQL record credentials are stored in a file called wp-config.php at the root of your website. To do this, you need the following lines inside a file called wp-config.php:

define('DB_NAME', 'myWordpressDB');
define('DB_USER', 'myUserName');
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'aVeryStrongPassword');
$table_prefix  = 'wp_';

You will then be able to use this information to log into MySQL and make the necessary changes. Before moving on, we’ll make a full backup of the database:

mysqldump -umyUserName -paVeryStrongPassword myWordpressDB | gzip -9 > myWordpressDB.sql.gz

The next step is to log into your MySQL database. You can do it like this:

mysql -umyUserName -paVeryStrongPassword

A list of available databases will be displayed:

show databases;

 +--------------------+
 | Database           |
 +--------------------+
 | myWordpressDB      |
 | information_schema |
 +--------------------+

Of all the existing ones, you need to choose myWordpressDB. Enter the following command:

use myWordpressDB;

Once you have successfully identified your WordPress base, you need to list all WordPress users along with their ID, username, and encrypted password:

SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM wp_users;
+----+------------+------------------------------------+
| ID | user_login | user_pass                          |
+----+------------+------------------------------------+
|  1 | admin      | FGpPqio82fIYCZK$P$B0cVrK0Wh7A.7NK/ |
|  2 | name       | $P$BCFybroBJDFuv1oQdLIWcNp8jMCmsl1 |
+----+------------+------------------------------------+

The first ID (1) is the priority and belongs to the main WordPress admin. Therefore, the password will be reset exactly to ID 1

UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass=MD5('YourNewStrongPassword') WHERE ID = 1;

After the procedure was successful, you can see that the user admin (1) already has a new password

+----+------------+------------------------------------+
| ID | user_login | user_pass                          |
+----+------------+------------------------------------+
|  1 | admin      | 00a95b8f755edd93daa0f3fdfb476936   |
|  2 | alex       | $P$BCFybroBJDFuv1oQdLIWcNp8jMCmsl1 |
+----+------------+------------------------------------+

By default WordPress uses PasswordHash to encrypt the user’s password, which hashes it using 8 MD5 passes. However, the default MD5 hash is also acceptable, so this method works.

Access to the grub operating system selection menu is required

When grub 2 is installed.

If the operating system selection menu appears when you boot your computer, you need to press the ‘e’ key – we will go into edit mode.You need to find the line that starts with ‘linux /vmlinux ….’. In this line at the end you need to add a space-separated string 'init=/bin/bash' .

This will instruct the kernel to use /bin/bash to initialize the system instead of the /bin/init image. After booting, you must put the root file system in write mode

mount -no remount,rw /

Now, to set a new password, just type the command

passwd username

where instead of username substitute the name of the desired user even ‘root’ superuser, and then

reboot

to restart the computer, or you can even type

exec /bin/init

to continue booting the OS as if nothing had happened.

When the GRUB operating system selection menu is not available.

If you have for one reason or another disabled the choice of operating systems at boot, the password can be reset using any LiveCD with Linux. To do this, you need to boot from the LiveCD, connect your root partition, and then set an empty password to the user by editing the /etc/shadow and /etc/shadow files – on this section, as described here. You can now reboot into your system and log in with an empty password.

Most importantly do not forget to write down in a secure location the new password to not to resort again to this procedure