Comments - Spurious - "Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)" in the /var/log/mysql/error.log.1 file
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SOLVED. The problem has been attributed to the lack of passwords being placed in the file: "/etc/mysql/debian.cnf". I had initially avoided doing any modifications to this file, as it had the admonition "# Automatically generated for Debian scripts. DO NOT TOUCH!". After running out of options, I went ahead and modified.
Of course things were not that simple. I am using PHPMyAdmin and Firefox. Firefox has its own password saving feature. Turns out that the password that you need to enter in the file debian.cnf, after being generated by PHPMyAdmin and then saved by Firefox are the passwords that you need to enter in the file: "/etc/mysql/debian.cnf"