Django/MySQL-python - Connection using old (pre-4.1.1) authentication protocol refused (client option 'secure_auth' enabled)

django, mysql, python

Solution

After much trial/error, the problem was narrowed down to passwords using an old encryption style.

mysql> select User, Password from mysql.user;
| user1           | *113D91F3A36D29C287C457A20D602FA384B8569F |
| user2           | 5d78f2535e56dfe0 |

Tools such as Navicat do not automatically use newer style passwords, and you have to explicitly tell it to not use old style (in Navicat, it's called Advanced/Use OLD_PASSWORD tncryption) - this is where we got tripped up.

If you're using mysql shell, you can just use;

mysql> update mysql.user set password=PASSWORD("NEWPASSWORD") where User='testuser';
Query OK, 1 row affected
Rows matched: 1  Changed: 1  Warnings: 0

mysql> select User, Password from mysql.user WHERE user = 'testuser';
| testuser | *B845F78DCA29B8AE945AB9CFFAC24A9D17EB5063 |

If you want to find all users affected by this problem;

mysql> SELECT Host, User, Password FROM mysql.user WHERE LENGTH(Password) = 16;

Some versions of Django do not allow you to use `secure-auth` inside the options, but for those that do you can use;

'OPTIONS': {
    'secure-auth': False
}

If it's unsupported, it will result in;

TypeError: 'secure-auth' is an invalid keyword argument for this function

This should hopefully serve as a quick answer for those having trouble in the future.

Problem

So many people have experienced this problem on SO, yet almost all the answers are useless. ``` Traceback (most recent call last): File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/commands/runserver.py", line 91, in inner_run self.validate(display_num_errors=True) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 266, in validate num_errors = get_validation_errors(s, app) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/core/management/validation.py", line 103, in get_validation_errors connection.validation.validate_field(e, opts, f) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/ backends/mysql/validation.py", line 14, in validate_field db_version = self.connection.get_server_version() File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py", line 415, in get_server_version self.cursor().close() File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/__init__.py", line 306, in cursor cursor = self.make_debug_cursor(self._cursor()) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/django/db/backends/mysql/base.py", line 387, in _cursor self.connection = Database.connect(**kwargs) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/__init__.py", line 81, in Connect return Connection(*args, **kwargs) File "/venv/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/MySQLdb/connections.py", line 193, in __init__ super(Connection, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs2) _mysql_exceptions.OperationalError: (2049, "Connection using old (pre-4.1.1) authentication protocol refused (client option 'secure_auth' enabled)") ```

Original source