MySQL Bugs: #108499: MySQL 8 client does not honour "-p" unless a password is included

Bug #108499	MySQL 8 client does not honour "-p" unless a password is included
Submitted:	15 Sep 2022 19:02	Modified:	15 Nov 2022 19:59
Reporter:	Joe Creighton	Email Updates:
Status:	Can't repeat	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Command-line Clients	Severity:	S3 (Non-critical)
Version:	8.0.30	OS:	Linux (Generic)
Assigned to:		CPU Architecture:	x86

Description:
MySQL 8 client does not honour "-p" unless a password is included: it doesn't prompt for a password and throws an immediate error regardless of user/host options passed and correct user,host combinations in mysql.user table:

mysql -u user -h host -p
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'user'@'host' (using password: YES)

MySQL 8 client will connect as expected with:

mysql -u user -ppassword

but this is not viable.

MySQL 5.7 client honours "-p" when passed without a password: it prompts for a password, with or without "-u" and regardless of what user is defined in ~/.my.cnf or ~/.mylogin.cnf:

mysql -u user -p
Enter password: 

man page for both versions state that -p with no argument should prompt for a password.

How to repeat:
mysql -u user -p

Suggested fix:
This workaround reverts to expected behaviour:

mysql --no-defaults -u user -p
Enter password: 

but is not ideal.  Revert to old behaviour so this option is not needed?

Corrected Category

Hello Joe Creighton,

Thank you for the bug report.
I tried to reproduce your issue with MySQL server 8.0.31 through command-line but I am not seeing any issues at my end.

Regards,
Ashwini Patil

I see in the 8.0.31 release notes that this has been fixed:  Following a bug fix in MySQL 8.0.29, if the password was provided in an option file, the mysql client did not prompt for a password if the -p option was specified at login. The client now always prompts for a password when the -p option is specified and uses the specified password, even if an alternative was populated from an option file. (Bug #107205, Bug #34134984)

Although the previous bug was the reverse scenario, I'll be testing my scenario -- passing user and "-p" in order to connect as a different user and be prompted for credentials -- as soon as I can patch.