Description of problem:

The initial MySQL configuration provides for a 'root' MySQL user
without a password.  In security-sensitive environments the usual
first step is to secure MySQL by putting a password on the root user:

mysql -u root mysql
> SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost=PASSWORD('new_password');

Unfortunately, after the password is set, the initscript will always
report a spurious failure when starting MySQL.  That's because the
initscript depends on a password-less root account in order to ping
the server.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

Any MySQL release.

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Install MySQL
2.  Assign the root password, as per above.
3.  "service mysqld stop"
4.  "service mysqld start"

Actual results:

# service mysqld start
Timeout error occurred trying to start MySQL Daemon.
Starting MySQL:                                            [FAILED]

Additional info:

MySQL actually starts, and is running.  The error is reported because
of this (two occurences in the mysqld initscript):

      if [ -n "`/usr/bin/mysqladmin ping 2> /dev/null`" ]; then

Because the login and password is not supplied, mysqladmin fails. I
have to replace the above with "/usr/bin/mysqladmin --user=root
--password=PASSWORD ping" in order for the initscript to work correctly.

Putting a password on the root MySQL account is a reasonable thing. 
The initscript should either be changed to use a different mechanism
to verify that the server is running, or the initscript should be
configurable, in some way, to use a password to ping the server.