Finding all files containing a text string on Linux
The instructions @ericklan posted are on the right track, though they aren't quite clear to me and seem to recommend more than is necessary....
So to reset the root password, you still start mySQL with --skip-grant-tables options and update the user table, but how you do it has...
It sounds like you don't have the GD extension installed. I don't use Ubuntu any longer, but I think it may be named php5-gd,...