mysql

The problem

When using MySQL from the CLI, the -e flag comes in handy to execute MySQL commands directly in bash, like mysql -uroot -p -e "SHOW DATABASES;". Which gives nicely formatted output like:

So the scenario is this: you notice that you are no longer able to login on your Drupal site:

• the {users} table entry for your account looks just fine
• the login and access timestamps on your account are just a few seconds old, matching your latest attempt to login
• you reset your password in the DB, just in case, and it still does not work
• the telltale is that Drupal will not even tell you your login failed: it actually works, as the {users} table shows, but yet you are not logged in

Can you guess what can have been going wrong and fix it ?

Tiny tip for the day: a one-liner to get the number of tables on a MySQL server across all databases:

mysql -BNe 'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLES' information_schema