MySQL remote connection fails with “unknown authentication method”

Question

I am trying to remotely connect to MySQL server online from my local machine, but I am getting the following error:

Warning: PDO::__construct(): The server r         


        

Answer 1

This may help someone with this issue. This is how I fixed it in my situation. From the MySQL PHP API (PDO_MYSQL) website

When running a PHP version before 7.1.16, or PHP 7.2 before 7.2.4, set MySQL 8 Server's default password plugin to mysql_native_password or else you will see errors similar to The server requested authentication method unknown to the client [caching_sha2_password] even when caching_sha2_password is not used.

This is because MySQL 8 defaults to caching_sha2_password, a plugin that is not recognized by the older PHP (mysqlnd) releases. Instead, change it by setting default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password in my.cnf. The caching_sha2_password plugin will be supported in a future PHP release. In the meantime, the mysql_xdevapi extension does support it.