How to clear ACL list?

I am having problem with MySQL. I have been told the following:

It looks like a acl issue on your mysql server, it seems that localhost does
not have access to your sql server, you will need to restart the mysql
server in safemode and reset the acl list to allow access to mysql again

[root@site root]# telnet localhost 3306
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
NHost 'localhost.localdomain' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL
serverConnection closed by foreign host..

Can somebody please tell me what should I type in SSH prompt to fix this? I am new to this kind of stuff, but trying to learn.

Looks like you are trying to access your mysql server without specifying the Host and/or username and password.

The default installation of Mysql comes with allowing root to connect without a password. This can only be done via the localhost.

something like this (logged in via ssh) should do it:

mysql -u root

if that doesn't help because the root user has a password set, you will need to ask for a password prompt by doing this:

mysql -u root -p

You will then be prompted for the password.

if you do not know the password and you have root access to the machine, you can start Mysql without permissions by skipping the grant tables (kill your mysqld processes first):

There are various ways to stop the mysql process. This is one way:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql stop
another way is
mysqld stop

depends on your platform

if using windows you would just do "net stop mysqld"

start without grant tables

/usr/bin/safe_mysqld --skip-grant-tables

or try another location if the above script was installed elsewhere.

Hope this helps a bit