Comment 11 for bug 501655

I can confirm this bug, and that the solution from brian works. I have summed it up, changed the bug description and set status to in progress, since with this solution I was able to successfully upgrade Mysql.

Cheers Lanoxx

---Solution---
If the user is not in the database you can fix it with these statements:

1. Step one, get the password for "debian-sys-maint":
~$ sudo cat /etc/mysql/debian.cnf |grep debian -C 5
[client]
host = localhost
user = debian-sys-maint
password = XXXXXXXXXX
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
[mysql_upgrade]
user = debian-sys-maint
password = XXXXXXXXXX
socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
basedir = /usr
2. Login to mysql as root and create the user "debian-sys-maint" with the password from above
~$mysql -uroot -p
***
>GRANT ALL ON *.* TO 'debian-sys-maint'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'XXXXXXXXXX';