Can't connect to MariaDB using JDBC, mysql utils succeed

Question

I use JDBC and Spring Boot 2.2.2 to connect to a MariaDB instance. The login fails with this message:

Caused by: java.sql.SQLInvalidAuthorizationSpecException: Could not connect to address=(host=server.company.domain)(port=3306)(type=master) : Access denied for user 'user'@'server.company.domain' (using password: YES)

When I run mysqldump -u"user" -p"password" -h server.company.domain dbname this works just fine !

• Both the dump and the Spring Boot application are run from the same machine (the database server itself)
• user and password used are identical
• there are no special characters in the password or the user (only lower/uppcase characters and digits)
• the jdbc connection string looks like this: jdbc:mariadb://server.company.domain:3306/dbname
• I already tried to use localhost instead of the server name
• when I change jdbc url, user and password the same application is able log in to my development mariaDB

Answer 1

I ran a short SHOW GRANTS; via the mysql command which is able to connect to the database. The output gave me this:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD 'nonono' REQUIRE SSL WITH GRANT OPTION

The relevant part is REQUIRE SSL: connections to that server need to be done encrypted.

When I checked the files in /etc/my.cnf.d/ I found a file containing (amongst others) these lines:

[server]
ssl=1
ssl-cert=/path/to/certificate/cert.pem

By googling a bit I found this link which describes how to set the JDBC driver to use ssl. It also explains to you why you perhaps should think twice before setting trustServerCertificate to true.

My spring.datasource.url now looks like this:

jdbc:mariadb://server.company.domain:3306/dbname?useSSL=true&trustServerCertificate=true&serverSslCert=/path/to/certificate/cert.pem

To put it short: Access denied for user doesn't tell the complete story. It makes you think that your password might be wrong but you are denied for other reasons.

Answer 2

It seems like you are having trouble with MariaDB, not spring-boot itself. I suggest you to follow this links: https://mariadb.com/kb/en/configuring-mariadb-for-remote-client-access/, and come back if it didn't solve your problem, with what you tried, and what didn't work.