How to fix MariaDB Error 1045 - Access denied for user

Question: I'm trying to logon to MariaDB via command line  and getting  the Error 1045 - Access Denied error on MariaDB running on RHEL. How can I troubleshoot & fix this error message?

mysql --user=my_user --password=my_pw --port=1601 --host=myhost

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'my_user'@'myserver' (using password: YES)

Answer:  As a first step check the logs to see if there are any other error messages

To find the location of the MariaDB error log file, go to the MariaDB cmd line:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'log_error';

To tail the error log file, use the location obtained from the above command output :

$ tail -f /mypath/myserver.err

There are a number of reason this error can occur , here is a sample:

1) Incorrect host - check you can ping the host

2) User doesn't exist - check the user exists - 

3)User exists but no connect permissions exist - SELECT Host, User FROM mysql.user WHERE User='myuser'

4)Password is wrong  - Doublecheck password or you may even need to reset the password with the SET PASSWORD command

5) Bash converting special characters - Wrap password in single quotes to block bash converting the characters