Laravel: Database password error with `php artisan cache:clear`

PHP 8.3, Laravel 11

php artisan cache:clear works on local dev machine, but on staging and production servers fails with:

In Connection.php line 825:
                                                                                           
  SQLSTATE[08006] [7] connection to server at "127.0.0.1", port 5432 failed: fe_sendauth:  
   no password supplied (Connection: pgsql, SQL: delete from "cache")                      

In Connector.php line 66:
                                                                                           
  SQLSTATE[08006] [7] connection to server at "127.0.0.1", port 5432 failed: fe_sendauth:  
   no password supplied

In the .env file, CACHE_STORE was originally database, but the same error occurs after setting CACHE_STORE=redis. The database and cache are both set up with passwords and working fine within the app. Config is not cached. No Docker involved. All other Artisan cache/clear commands work fine.

Why is it not using DB_PASSWORD from the .env, and why is it accessing the database at all when CACHE_STORE=redis?

Tried:

• sudo php artisan cache:clear

• php artisan config:clear

• service nginx restart

• service php-fpm restart

• reboot

./config/cache.php 'database' references DB_CACHE_CONNECTION etc. without default values, so I set the following in .env:

DB_CACHE_CONNECTION=pgsql
DB_CACHE_LOCK_CONNECTION=pgsql
DB_CACHE_LOCK_TABLE=cache_locks

Same error.

There must be a difference between production and local setups but I can't think of it.

Where can I start debugging?

It was a file permissions problem. The console user didn't have read access of the .env file, but there was no error at time of reading.

I have been setting permissions as strict as possible and loosening them each time a problem arose... unfortunately this time took too long to realise it was a permissions problem.