Unable to reset MySQL root password, tried everthing

I had the same problem, and I solved it by executing this line:

$ sudo mkdir /var/run/mysqld; sudo chown mysql /var/run/mysqld

before executing this line:

root@localhost:/# mysqld_safe --init-file=/home/me/mysql-init &

For me, these steps worked better.

I think there is a cleaner way to do this, but for me, it was a quick and efficient workaround.