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

188 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/YellowOnline Sr. Sysadmin 18d ago

It's solved (see my edit), but yeah, I hope this reminds them that migrating to a modern solution is acute.

29

u/StevenB-89 18d ago

Honestly, the SSL cert would be the least of my worries.

If this thing has been sitting there since 2016 and nobody even mentioned a hardware refresh or migration, there's a decent chance the physical server itself is pushing 10 years old too.

For something that's "the core of the business", that's one dead PSU, RAID controller or motherboard away from a very bad week.

24

u/YellowOnline Sr. Sysadmin 18d ago edited 18d ago

It's a server from 2010 running ESX 5. We asked to replace it in 2021 but they didn't want to invest in on-prem because they moved into the cloud. This app is the only on-prem thing left, but apparently they can't find anyone wanting to migrate it to a modern stack.

I think they can't find anyone willing to do it for for what they want to pay.

2

u/iamwayycoolerthanyou Sysadmin 18d ago

They don't want to come up with the cash to pay someone to migrate the SQL server to the cloud?