How get or set the root password on lightsail lamp mariadb

I created a new lightsail lamp instance using php 8. It gave me mariadb. I think all is set, but I cannot log in as root to mariadb to change the root password or add a user or whatever. I have been searching and trying things for hours. How do I get control of this? I tried changing my my.cnf to have skip-grant-tables, and then I could get in by doing mysql - u root, but it still would not let me change the root password. it says user not in table. I tried changing to table mysql and I can list the root user. If I could find the root password, that would be fine as well as then I could log in with phpmyadmin. I am trying to upgrade my lightsail instance to the latest version. I have everything else working, but can't load the database because I can't access it. Not sure what to try next. Please advise. Thanks in advance for any help.