Bug #24640 MySQL Password within Merlin fails if containing special characters like +
Submitted: 28 Nov 2006 2:17 Modified: 29 Nov 2006 21:38
Reporter: Lachlan Mulcahy Email Updates:
Status: Closed Impact on me:
None 
Category:MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Installing Severity:S3 (Non-critical)
Version:1.0.0 OS:Linux (Linux / Windows)
Assigned to: BitRock Merlin CPU Architecture:Any
Tags: mer101

[28 Nov 2006 2:17] Lachlan Mulcahy
Description:
If giving a MySQL database password like "abc+123" to the Dashboard installer to use at installation time, the JDBC URL within the /opt/mysql/network/monitoring/apache-tomcat/conf/server.xml file is not properly URL encoding the special characters.

The password "abc+123" will appear directly as "abc+123" which is interpretted as "abc 123" after being URL decoded.

This causes a failure to connect to the MySQL server, which appears to the end user as if their login credentials are incorrect -- which may or may not be the case.

How to repeat:
Give a MySQL password that contains a + sign to the Dashboard installer and observe a login failure at the web interface after install.

Suggested fix:
The password should be correctly encoded as given by the simple URL encoding function example here: http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/PERL/node201.html

Perhaps a more descriptive error message should also be given back to the end user. The current error implies that the password given is incorrect, whereas the truth is that the Tomcat server within Dashboard was simply unable to connect to the MySQL database.
[29 Nov 2006 14:05] Keith Russell
Installed in version 1.0.1.4350