MariaDB: error 1045 when doing GRANT ALL - mariadb

Question

I'm hoping that someone can help me here. With Centos 7 all the install docs I have found said to use MariaDB instead of mysql which is fine, but I can't seem to enable remote access.I have used the "GRANT ALL ON . to user#'address' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-root-password';" and flushed privileges and restarted the service. I still am not able to connect via remote terminal I get ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user username.
So I found another article that said I should go to my my.cnf file and make sure my bind settings are set correctly and such.
https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/documentation/getting-started/configuring-mariadb-for-remote-client-access/
Based on what this article shows my my.cnf file is completely different than what it should be. Doesn't contain bind-address or skip-networking or port or anything. It looks like the below.
[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks
symbolic-links=0
# Settings user and group are ignored when systemd is used.
# If you need to run mysqld under a different user or group,
# customize your systemd unit file for mariadb according to the
# instructions in http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mariadb/mariadb.log
pid-file=/var/run/mariadb/mariadb.pid
#
# include all files from the config directory
#
!includedir /etc/my.cnf.d
I was wondering if anyone else might know what's going on with this. Thanks.

Answer 1

You may want to investigate this link:
http://www.versatilewebsolutions.com/blog/2015/05/dealing-with-mariadb-plugin-unixsocket-is-not-loaded.html
Essentially, MariaDB switched to unix_socket authentication as a default authentication plugin. To get around it, connect to your MariaDB server and execute these queries:
USE mysql;
UPDATE user SET plugin='' WHERE User = 'root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit
This will disable socket authentication and switch back to standard authentication. I do not think this is recommended for production.