[SOLVED] Using Ansible to change initial mariadb-server root password is giving access denied

Using Ansible to change initial mariadb-server root password is giving access denied

I have instaledl mariadb-server using the dnf module and when it comes time to change the default blank password, I have no success with various options passed to the mysql_user module. Access denied even tho I can "login" directly with the root/ option on the node.

I successfully 'dnf' mariadb-server (RHEL 9.2), I attempt to change the default blank password with:

 - name: Set root user to password
      mysql_user:
        check_implicit_admin: true
        login_host: 'localhost'
        login_user: 'root'
        login_password: ''
        name: 'root'
        password: '12345'
        state: present
      become: yes

I keep getting:

fatal: [node1]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "unable to connect to database, check login_user and login_password are correct or /root/.my.cnf has the credentials. Exception message: (1698, \"Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'\")"}

For the record, I can log into each node and 'sudo mysql -u root -h localhost' with no issue.

Solution

You cannot login as passwordless root via -h localhost (which is what it defaults to). One must also include in the above statements login_unix_socket: /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock for it to work.