Pain after macports "routine" MySQL/PHP update, now relieved

I did a port selfupdate, and updated a few ports, then spent four hours underwater dealing with things that suddenly stopped working:

  php5 fatal error call to undefined function mysql_connect

Making sure I had the following installed (with options I needed) fixed the error above.

• mysql5-server 5.1.42_0 (was already OK)
• php5 5.3.1_1+apache2+darwin_10+fastcgi+macosx+mysql5+postgresql83+sqlite
• php5-mysql 5.3.1_2+mysqlnd

I checked the setup with php_info(), but then I got another error:

  mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: [2002] No such file or directory (trying to connect via unix:///tmp/mysql.sock)

After some investigation, I created a php.ini file:

$ sudo cp /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini{-development,}
  $ sudo chown username /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini

Edited php.ini:

< mysql.default_socket =
  --
  > mysql.default_socket = /opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock

(I have a memory of having done something like this before, but apparently I had to do it again.)

Then, of course, I got new errors:

mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: OK packet 6 bytes shorter than expected.
  mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: mysqlnd cannot connect to MySQL 4.1+ using old authentication in ...

The Google helpfully led me to this stackoverflowanswer (why didn't I think of that first?!), and the answer was a total surprise. Happily, after the final fix, everything is working again:

mysql> select Length(`Password`), Substring(`Password`,1,1)
  from `mysql`.`user` where `user` = 'username';
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  | Length(`Password`) | Substring(`Password`,1,1) |
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  |                 16 | 3                         |
  |                 16 | 3                         |
  |                  0 |                           |
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  3 rows in set (0.07 sec)
  mysql> set password for 'username'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('password');
  Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
  mysql> select Length(`Password`), Substring(`Password`,1,1)
  from `mysql`.`user` where `user` = 'username';
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  | Length(`Password`) | Substring(`Password`,1,1) |
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  |                 41 | *                         |
  |                 16 | 3                         |
  |                  0 |                           |
  +--------------------+---------------------------+
  3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now that a good chunk of my "free day" has been used up, I think I'm going outside for some fresh air.