MariaDB [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'auth_socket.so'

Symptoms

New installations of MariaDB 10.11 are unable to load the auth_socket.so plugin, and the following error can be seen in the error log.

2025-04-25 16:50:47 0 [ERROR] mariadbd: Can't open shared library '/usr/lib64/mysql/plugin/auth_socket.so' (errno: 2, cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
2025-04-25 16:50:47 0 [ERROR] Couldn't load plugins from 'auth_socket.so'.

Description

The auth_socket plugin doesn't exist in MariaDB 10.11. Another authentication plugin needs to be used.

We've opened an internal case for our development team to investigate this further. For reference, the case number is CPANEL-47033. Follow this article to receive an email notification when a solution is published in the product. 

Workaround

1. Access the server's command line as the 'root' user via SSH or "Terminal" in WHM.
2. Open /etc/my.cnf in your preferred text editor.
3. Set the plugin_load_add value to auth_ed25519.

   plugin-load-add=auth_ed25519

4. Save the changes and exit the text editor.
5. Restart the SQL service.

   /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/restartsrv_mysql