On Centos 5 I was getting all sorts of errors trying to make changes to some variable values from the MySQL shell, after having logged in with the proper uid and pw (with root access). The error that I was getting was something like this:
mysql> -- Set some variable value, for example
mysql> SET GLOBAL general_log='ON';
ERROR 1227 (42000): Access denied; you need (at least one of) the SUPER privilege(s) for this operation
In a moment of extreme serendipity I did the following:
OS-Shell> sudo mysql # no DB uid, no DB pw
Kindly note that I did not provide the DB uid and password
mysql> show variables;
mysql> -- edit the variable of interest to the desired value, for example
mysql> SET GLOBAL general_log='ON';
It worked like a charm
SUPER
privilege to administer the whole server if that's the case. – Ezequiel Muns