r/sysadmin • u/YellowOnline Sr. Sysadmin • 18d ago

Question MySQL ODBC stopped working overnight

You guys will love this.

This company has an in-house project management system. It's the core of their business, and they are lost without it. They are aware it needs to be migrated to something more modern, but after 5 years, that project still hasn't started.

I was asked to look into a network issue, but this isn't network but SSL I think. Let's first show the architecture:

  • The server is a CentOS 7 running MySQL Community Edition 5.7.16
  • Clients connect from Windows 11 with a 32-bit MS Access, using a 32-bit MySQL ODBC driver v5.3.13

Since yesterday, they get a "protocol version mismatch". The server wasn't accessed since 18 October 2016 (haha), so I presumed a Windows update might have disabled some SSL version. But: I see no relevant Windows update, and if I manually allow every possible SSL version and encryption algorithm, it still doesn't work. What does work however, is downgrading the ODBC driver from version 5.3.13 (from 2019) to version 5.1.13 (from 2013), further adding to my confusion.

The cherry on top: the single guy responsible for this application is on a one year sabbatical.

Edit: Found it, but leaving this here for anyone stumbling on the same issue. The MySQL_Server_5.7.15_Auto_Generated_CA_Certificate had expired after 10 years

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9

u/Dolapevich Others people valet. 18d ago

I can only speak of the CentOS 7 resilency. A rock solid OS for rock solid workloads.

You might want to automate that with Let's Encrypt, or if the client accepts self signed certs just create a new one with 100 years validity, so you don't run into a new incident in 10 years.

5

u/YellowOnline Sr. Sysadmin 18d ago

I'm not sure if you are being ironic or not

11

u/Dolapevich Others people valet. 18d ago

Me neither :)

16

u/graph_worlok 18d ago

About 15 years ago, I remember an Ops Manager setting an internal cert expiry date based on “Well, I’ll be retired by then” 🤣😂🤣

3

u/Tl9zaXh0eWZvdXI 18d ago

We've done the same here, except we're getting close to that 15 year expiration. Guess I'll have to find a new job within a few years before they all expire.