ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’

When you try to login to the MySQL database with the root user, you get the “ERROR 1698 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost'” error.

Some systems like Ubuntu, mysql is using by default the UNIX auth_socket plugin.

Connect to your database and run commands

mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> SELECT User, Host, plugin FROM mysql.user;

output:

+------------------+-----------------------+
| User             | plugin                |
+------------------+-----------------------+
| root             | auth_socket           |
| mysql.sys        | mysql_native_password |
| debian-sys-maint | mysql_native_password |
+------------------+-----------------------+

As you can see in the output, the root user is using the auth_socket plugin

There are 2 ways to solve this:

First option:

mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> UPDATE user SET plugin='mysql_native_password' WHERE User='root';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit;

$ service mysql restart

Second option (recommended):

mysql> USE mysql;
mysql> CREATE USER 'YOUR_SYSTEM_USER'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'YOUR_SYSTEM_USER'@'localhost';
mysql> UPDATE user SET plugin='auth_socket' WHERE User='YOUR_SYSTEM_USER';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> exit;

$ service mysql restart