XAMPP set root user password for MariaDB

Question

How do you set the root user password for MariaDB in XAMPP on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 16.04?

By default the root user does not have a password set.

I\'m using XAMPP 7.1.1

Answer 1

This link to Meer's World made it easy for me because it's done through the phpMyAdmin screens directly and then the config.inc.php file. I tried the SQL query and command line methods described elsewhere and none worked properly. This was easy.