Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'
<p>I went through all similar or identical questions (<a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21944936/error-1045-28000-access-denied-for-user-rootlocalhost-using-password-y">this</a> and <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19533441/access-denied-for-user-rootlocalhost-using-password-yes-after-password-r">this</a>, for ex.) but still can't solve the problem. </p>

<p>I am on Xenial and have MySQL 5.7.12. I do not remember setting any password during installation (if it asked, I provided empty one). </p>

<p>I tried to go through password reset using <code>--skip-grant-tables</code>, as described <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/resetting-permissions.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, it updated the database row, but I still cannot login. </p>

<p>Reconfiguring with <code>sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.7</code> doesn't do anything, I get this: </p>

<pre><code>Checking if update is needed.
This installation of MySQL is already upgraded to 5.7.12, use --force if you still need to run mysql_upgrade
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure --force mysql-server-5.7
Checking if update is needed.
This installation of MySQL is already upgraded to 5.7.12, use --force if you still need to run mysql_upgrade
</code></pre>

<p>Any ideas?</p>