Can't log in with MySQL username containing "á"

[ibennetch]

Steps to reproduce

1. Create a user containing the á character (mine is simply called á without any other characters)
2. Log out and attempt to log in as that user

Expected behaviour

I should be logged in successfully

Actual behaviour

I am shown the error message

mysqli_real_connect(): (28000/1045): Access denied for user 'á'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

Server configuration

Operating system:
Debian Linux
Web server:
Apache 2.4.10
Database:
MySQL 5.5.49
PHP version:
5.6.20
phpMyAdmin version:
4.7.0-dev; git revision 5a4af02
Client library
libmysql - 5.5.49

Client configuration

Browser:
Firefox 46.0.2
Operating system:
Mac OS X

[ibennetch]

By the way, mysql -u á -p works correctly.

[nijel]

This is caused by client charset being set to something else that utf-8. The problem is that there is no way in PHP to set charset before authenticating. So PHP is sending utf-8 encoded string, while MySQL parses it as iso-8859-1 (what is usually the default).

Also see http://php.net/manual/en/mysqli.real-connect.php#refsect1-mysqli.real-connect-notes

So I think the only way to allow authentication with non ascii usernames (or passwords) is to change server default charset to utf-8.

[ibennetch]

Thanks for figuring that out.

So this is really a MySQL configuration issue and there's nothing we can do about it. But I wonder why the command line client works, then.

I'm not even sure that this is worth adding a FAQ entry about at this point. What do you think?

[nijel]

I'm not sure either. I assume you have found this while solving question of some user, right?

[ibennetch]

Correct, although I believe discovering this was a side-effect of their actual problem, rather than the problem itself.

If there's nothing to be done in the code, I think it's best to write a FAQ about it and move on.

[ibennetch]

Do you mind reviewing #12284 for accuracy?