There is a small change to the way to update the root password for MySQL in Mac OS 10.10.
If you do not have a root password already, then log into mysql like this (otherwise use your password):
$> mysql -u root
Then tell mysql you want to ‘use’ the mysql database.
Before version MySQL 5.7 , the updating the root password looked like this:
mysql> USE mysql; mysql> UPDATE user SET password=PASSWORD("NEWPASSWORD") WHERE User='root'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; mysql> quit
As of version MySQL 5.7 the ‘password’ column is renamed to ‘authentication_string’.
The proceedure looks like this:
mysql> USE mysql; mysql> UPDATE user SET authentication_string=PASSWORD("NEWPASSWORD") WHERE User='root'; mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; mysql> quit