Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client ... Joy !

I was prompted with this useful error message upon trying to get an inherited web application to look at a MySQL database. Turns out that it's related to the password hashing algorithm in older MySQL clients. Well since the IP address had changed no my webserver it kinda' made sense. root@ipaddress.com was no longer going to work. After trawling around the internet for a bit I came across this on the official MySQL website which proved to be invaluable.

Turns out a simple SQL statement was all that was needed to correct the problem :

SET PASSWORD FOR 'some_user'@'some_host' = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd');

Nice !

Further Reading:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/old-client.html