I've recently had to reinstall mysql server and, for some reason, there was no prompt to set a root password. Also, running dpkg-reconfigure mysql-community-server (and client) doesn't bring any prompts. The old password I used doesn't work, nor does a variety of different passwords, nor leaving the password blank.
So, I've looked around for a way to reset the root password and found that you need to stop the service, then start it with the arguments --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking, or --initialize-insecure (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.0/en/data-directory-initialization-mysqld.html)
The problem is that, whenever I try either, it fails with the following error message:
2018-12-27T13:57:43.343621Z 0 [System] [MY-010116] [Server] /usr/sbin/mysqld (mysqld 8.0.13) starting as process 67033
2018-12-27T13:57:43.346792Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010123] [Server] Fatal error: Please read "Security" section of the manual to find out how to run mysqld as root!
2018-12-27T13:57:43.346863Z 0 [ERROR] [MY-010119] [Server] Aborting
2018-12-27T13:57:43.347038Z 0 [System] [MY-010910] [Server] /usr/sbin/mysqld: Shutdown complete (mysqld 8.0.13) MySQL Community Server - GPL.
root@host:/# mysql
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' (2)
Of course, simply pointing to the Security section doesn't help at all. What, exactly, do I have to do to make the command (mysqld --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking OR --initialize-insecure) run with those arguments and not fail?
Running on Debian 9