I've a root User on the MariaDB on Ubuntu 16.04.
As default the root user is authenticated by the unix_socket
authentication plugin.
I can switch the authentication method to password method by setting
update mysql.user set plugin='' where user='root';
This works fine. But ...
Is there a possibility to authenticate the root user by unix_socket (by root shell) or by password (when it is connected by localhost:3306)?
A reliable and straightforward way would be to create another super-user and use it when you want to connect by password.
CREATE USER admin@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT ALL ON *.* TO admin@localhost WITH GRANT OPTION;
-- etc