Root Password for MySQL on the Treehouse VM?

I just ran into this same issue. I followed the advice on this thread to fix the problem. Here are the steps I took (YMMV):

1. For me, the treehouse VM password for the mysql root account was "treehouse"
2. Open mysql CLI using mysql -u root -p and specifying "treehouse" as the password.
3. Run the following statements: UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('MyNewPass') WHERE User='root'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
4. In your rails project, open config/database.yml and specify your new password in dev, test and production.
5. Run rake db:create again.

Hey Michael Hulet there should be no root mysql password. Which treehouse vm are you using? That will help us troubleshoot the issue.

Michael Hulet Yep! That VM shouldn't have a mysql root password set. Perhaps one was set accidentally or by a random program? Perhaps try downloading the VM again.

So I ended up spending the past couple weeks scouring the internet for possible answers, and I ended up getting it working locally on my Mac by running brew install mysql, then starting the MySQL server with mysql.server start. I almost got it working on Ubuntu 14.04 on my ChromeBook (running ChrUbuntu) by installing a few developer libraries with APT, but it says it's just missing a JavaScript Runtime Environment, and I'm honestly too lazy to fix that, since I just got it working on my Mac

I'm getting this on the treehouse vm as well.

Couldn't create database for {"adapter"=>"mysql2", "encoding"=>"utf8", "database"=>"biller_test", "pool"=>5, "username"=>"root", "password"=>nil, "socket"=>"/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock"}