How can one see that is using a temporary segment

For every user using temporary space, there is an entry in SYS.V$_LOCK with type 'TS' 
All temporary segments are named 'ffff.bbbb' where 'ffff' is the file it is in and 'bbbb' is first block of the segment. If you’re temporary tablespace is set to TEMPORARY all sorts are done in one large temporary segment
For usage stats, see SYS.V$SORT_SEGMENT from Oracle 8.0, one can just query SYS.v$sort_usage

Example

SQL>select s.username, u."USER", u.tablespace, u.contents, u.extents, u.blocks
from sys.v_$session s, sys.v$sort_usage u
where s.saddr = u.session_addr;

SQL>select s.osuser, s.process, s.username, s.serial#,
Sum (u.blocks)*vp.value/1024 sort_size
from sys.v_$session s, sys.v_$sort_usage u, sys.v_$parameter VP
where s.saddr = u.session_addr
and vp.name = 'db_block_size'
and s.osuser like '&1'
group by s.osuser, s.process, s.username, s.serial#, vp.value;

How to fix: ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ (using password: YES)

Open your terminal and type mysql -u root -p Enter your password. Hopefully your MySQL is logged in now.