I've inherited development for a website on vps hosting, and have login info for a user with sudo privileges, but don't have the password for the mysql root user. After digging around a little, it looks like the only way to fix this is to stop mysql (something like this: http://waoewaoe.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/recover-reset-mysql-root-password/). But because the website it's serving is currently in production, I'm hoping you guys can enlighten me to any potential consequences (or let me know if there's typically a file where the password would be accessible).

a) during the time mysql is stopped, information in the database won't be accessible, right -- even by other users?

b) will resetting the root password have any impact on other users after mysql has restarted? Will their username/passwords still be valid? The current application is using an account with limited privileges to read/write to the database, and while 5min downtime in the middle of the night would probably go unnoticed, half a day while I tie up loose ends/figure out what I screwed up will land in me hot water.

Thanks in advance for your help!