It kept saying Server is running in --secure-auth mode, but 'root'@'localhost' has a password in the old format; please change the password to the new format on debian

I tried adding skip-grant-tables and secure-auth=off to mysqld in my.cnf
but then it says
error: 'Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' mysql debian

I'm using debian 10 after updating mariadb

please someone help

This link has a few methods to get around the issue, or how to update the password hash to the new format.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-auth-mode-but

Ok this link they say I should update the password but it won't let me, it keeps saying access denied to root@localhost

I've also tried to use

> mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &

to login to mysql, it let me change the password but when I tried to restart mysql it crashed with
an error :

>>Aria engine is not enabled or did not start. The Aria engine must be enabled to continue as mysqld was configured with --with-aria-tmp-tables<<

I had to delete aria_log_control in /var/lib/mysql to restart mariadb
and then I tried to log in again and same error comes up.

Looks like you have to do the answer below that one first, and change the my.cnf to say Then you should be able to start it and then reset the password.

I've fixed it now. Problem was I had to go into mysqld_safe with skip-grant-tables by
putting in this command:

mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &

then open mysql

sudo mysql -u root

So before when I did this and tried to change the password for root so that it could be able to log in again I didn't use the right command to change it
I noticed this when I selected rows from mysql.user and saw in the authentication_string column it said old_password for root.
After I changed the password for root using
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('new_password');
I followed exact instructions from this article linked below to a T:

https://www.digitalocean.com/communi...-root-password

For anyone who comes into this problem when updating mariadb on debian 10 remember to follow every instruction carefully and make sure you use the right commands
for your mysql version. In the future it may change.

Also the >>Aria engine is not enabled or did not start << error was caused by not terminating and killing processes running mysql safe mode after updating the root password and attempting to restart Mysql. You have to make sure to kill all processes running mysql first.

Thanks anyway.