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Dealing with MySQL Old-Style Passwords

Posted on 05/20/2009 at 04:37 pm by Kevin Wentworth
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I ran into a problem I've seen before- Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client. Last time I came across this MySQL error, it was a simple query to fix the issue (from dev.mysql.com):

That didn't work... instead IT CRASHED THE SERVER!  I was in a position that I couldn't upgrade the version of PHP (running PHP 4.4.3).  Upgrading would have given me access to the mysqli library- the improved library for MySQL.  No such luck.  I thought I was up the creek. 

Then I came up with a very simple solution.  I had done this before on another MySQL server without it crashing.  Here's what I did:

• I made the login I wanted and used the above SQL to "downgrade" the password using the old_password() function on the server that it worked on.
• I had root access to both MySQL servers
• I copied (CTRL-C/CTRL-V for you power users) the password from the one server to the other
• Flushed the privaleges and boom!  It worked.

I'm not sure what was crashing the MySQL server (it's version 4.1.4).  I didn't have time.  Sometimes the low-tech way is the best way.  Cheers,

-Kevin Wentworth