Authentication plugin ‘caching_sha2_password’ cannot be loaded

You can change the encryption of the user’s password by altering the user with below Alter command :

ALTER USER ‘username’@’ip_address’ IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY ‘password’;

OR

We can avoid this error by make it work with old password plugin:

First change the authentication plugin in my.cnf file for Linux / my.ini file in Windows:

[mysqld]

default_authentication_plugin=mysql_native_password

Restart the mysql server to take the changes in affect and try connecting via MySQL with any mysql client.

If still unable to connect and getting the below error:

Unable to load plugin 'caching_sha2_password'

It means your user needs the above plugin. So try creating new user with create user or grant command after changing default plugin. then new user need the native plugin and you will able to connect MySQL.

Thanks