Laravel: Access denied for user 'forge'@'localhost' (but no such user is used in the app)

Question

I've a Laravel application that works well but for some strange reason there is a lot of strange messages in log files:

[2019-10-04 10:24:21] production.ERROR: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'forge'@'localhost' (using password: NO) {"exception":"[object] (Doctrine\DBAL\Driver\PDOException(code: 1045): SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access d enied for user 'forge'@'localhost' (using password: NO) at /var/www/html/pzw_prod/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Driver/PDOConnection.php:31, PDOException(code: 1045): SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'forge'@'l ocalhost' (using password: NO) at /var/www/html/pzw_prod/vendor/doctrine/dbal/lib/Doctrine/DBAL/Driver/PDOConnection.php:27)

The thing is, I'm not connecting to database with user named forge. My .env uses completely different logins. And, I repeat, everything works fine: communication with database works as expected. Data is being successfully read and written.

So... why this message in log files?

UPDATE:

config('database')

$ php artisan tinker
Psy Shell v0.9.9 (PHP 7.2.22 — cli) by Justin Hileman
>>> config('database')
=> [
     "default" => "mysql",
     "connections" => [
       "sqlite" => [
         "driver" => "sqlite",
         "url" => null,
         "database" => /* CENSORED */,
         "prefix" => "",
         "foreign_key_constraints" => true,
       ],
       "mysql" => [
         "driver" => "mysql",
         "url" => null,
         "host" => "127.0.0.1",
         "port" => "3306",
         "database" => /* CENSORED */,
         "username" => "prod_pzw",
         "password" => /* CENSORED */,
         "unix_socket" => "",
         "charset" => "utf8",
         "collation" => "utf8_unicode_ci",
         "prefix" => "",
         "prefix_indexes" => true,
         "strict" => true,
         "engine" => null,
         "options" => [],
       ],
       "pgsql" => [
         "driver" => "pgsql",
         "url" => null,
         "host" => "127.0.0.1",
         "port" => "3306",
         "database" => /* CENSORED */,
         "username" => "prod_pzw",
         "password" => /* CENSORED */,
         "charset" => "utf8",
         "prefix" => "",
         "prefix_indexes" => true,
         "schema" => "public",
         "sslmode" => "prefer",
       ],
       "sqlsrv" => [
         "driver" => "sqlsrv",
         "url" => null,
         "host" => "127.0.0.1",
         "port" => "3306",
         "database" => /* CENSORED */,
         "username" => "prod_pzw",
         "password" => /* CENSORED */,
         "charset" => "utf8",
         "prefix" => "",
         "prefix_indexes" => true,
       ],
     ],
     "migrations" => "migrations",
     "redis" => [
       "client" => "predis",
       "options" => [
         "cluster" => "predis",
         "prefix" => /* CENSORED */,
       ],
       "default" => [
         "url" => null,
         "host" => "127.0.0.1",
         "password" => null,
         "port" => "6379",
         "database" => 0,
       ],
       "cache" => [
         "url" => null,
         "host" => "127.0.0.1",
         "password" => null,
         "port" => "6379",
         "database" => 1,
       ],
     ],
   ]

UPDATE 2:

It seems that 'forge' is some kind of default login. It seems that sometimes Laravel is not using values from .env. How can I debug this?

$ cat config/database.php | grep -B 5 forge
        'mysql' => [
            'driver' => 'mysql',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
--
        'pgsql' => [
            'driver' => 'pgsql',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '5432'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
--
        'sqlsrv' => [
            'driver' => 'sqlsrv',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '1433'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),

Answer 1

I had this exact same problem for the past few days and I think I solved it:

The settings in .env are not always used for some reason or other and occasionally Laravel will just use the default settings in config/app.php and config/database.php.

config/app.php:

// Change the 'SomeRandomString' to the generated key from your .env
'key' => env('APP_KEY', 'SomeRandomString'),
 
'cipher' => 'AES-256-CBC',

config/database.php

'mysql' => [
    'driver'    => 'mysql',
    'host'      => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
    'database'  => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
    'username'  => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
    'password'  => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
    'charset'   => 'utf8',
    'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
    'prefix'    => '',
    'strict'    => false,
],

Change localhost, database, username, password to your actual settings from the .env.

This example is for MySQL if you use another database engine, change to those variables instead.

There might be a better solution (more secure?) but this is what so far kept the error from showing up.