Comment 42 for bug 1447944

Sorry for the double-post, but I have to correct my previous statement. #29 did not help.
What helped was logging in via the mysql console as debian-sys-maint and doing the following:

use mysql;
update user set plugin='' where User='root';
\q

After restarting the service using "service mysql restart", everything worked again. And yes, I do have to enter a password for root. It works perfectly. Maybe I'll run into other issues later, but I hope that this fixed the problem permanently. Phew.

Kudos to #8 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2275033