Currently mysql 4.2.10. For years I've used encode() and decode() for low-level encrypting so the values could be extracted (say, as in a password retrieval.) I know the encode() data should be stored in a binary or blob field, but have always been able to insert them in a varchar field.

For whatever reason, this has stopped working in a newly created database. encode('somevalue','somepass') is truncating 'somevalue' to one or two characters. It works if I convert the field to binary or blob, but then the decode doesn't work in plain text.

Oddly enough I have other databases on the same server that are working fine. Any ideas?