MySQLTuner on 16.04: ERROR 1054 (42S22) at line 1: Unknown column ‘password’ in ‘where clause’

When running MysqlTuner on Ubuntu 16.04, you might see the error “ERROR 1054 (42S22) at line 1: Unknown column ‘password’ in ‘where clause'”, since Debian hasn’t updated his package yet (the fix has been implemented in later versions of MysqlTuner).

 

The root cause of this issue is the fact that MySQL changed the name of its password column in mysql.user from password to authentication_string.

 

To ‘temporarily’ fix this, you can change the few entries (8 in total) containing ‘password’ into ‘authentication_string’ manually.

  • sudo nano /usr/bin/mysqltuner
  • 2 entries to change under # Looking for Empty Password
  • 3 entries under # Looking for User with user/ uppercase /capitalise user as password
  • 3 entries under # Looking for User with user/ uppercase /capitalise weak password

Just be sure to leave the PASSWORD() function untouched. They will all be left hand assignments (password = or password IS NULL) or in the clause (password as Binary)