Question

I have a recently set up VPS with cPanel.

I’ve made a user and created a database, and now I would like to import a database onto it.

However, when I try I get the error message

#1044 – Access denied for user ‘user’@’localhost’ to database ‘database’

I suspect that this can be fixed with WHM, but I do not feel like trial and error just yet.
How would I go about fixing this?

Answer 1

When you import a database using phpMyAdmin, normally you do so by importing a text file with a .sql extension. Here is a section of code that may be in a .sql database backup. In your example, the database you are trying to import is named database.

-- phpMyAdmin SQL Dump
-- version 2.11.9.5
-- http://www.phpmyadmin.net
--
-- Host: localhost
-- Generation Time: Apr 02, 2010 at 08:01 AM
-- Server version: 5.0.81
-- PHP Version: 5.2.6

SET SQL_MODE="NO_AUTO_VALUE_ON_ZERO";

CREATE DATABASE database;
-- --------------------------------------------------------
--
-- Table structure for table `table`
--

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `table` (
`column1` text NOT NULL,
`column2` text NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

When using phpMyAdmin to attempt to import such a file, you will receive an error message similar to:

Error

SQL query:

CREATE DATABASE database;

MySQL said: Documentation
#1044 - Access denied for user 'user'@'localhost' to database 'database'

In this scenario, the cPanel username is user. Because of cPanel’s database naming conventions, all database names must begin with the cPanel username followed by _. Using this format you can only creat a database named user_database.

The reason this import failed is because of the following line in the .sql file…

CREATE DATABASE database;

Again, you cannot create a database named database, however you can create a database named user_database.

If you change the line that says: CREATE DATABASE so that it creates: user_database instead of database it will again fail with the following message:

Error

SQL query:

CREATE DATABASE user_database;

MySQL said: Documentation
#1044 - Access denied for user 'user'@'localhost' to database 'user_database'

When using cPanel, databases must be created within the cPanel itself.

Here are the steps to correct thi sissue:

1. Create the user_database database within cPanel

2. Comment out the CREATE DATABASE command in my .sql file

   To do this, simply change:

   CREATE DATABASE database;

   to

   -- CREATE DATABASE database;

   You are simply adding dash-dash-space to the front of the line to comment it out so that it will not be executed.

3. Log into phpMyAdmin, access the user_database database, and then import as normal.