Question

I’ve just created a new MySQL user with a password and granted them all privileges on a database. Now I’d like to connect to that database, with the password I just set, and I can’t:

mysql> create user 'reviews' identified by 'reviews';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> grant all on reviews.* to 'reviews'@'localhost';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> exit;
Bye
$ mysql -U reviews -u reviews -p
Enter password: 
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'reviews'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

What am I doing wrong? I’m working on MacOS Lion in a bash shell, version 10.6 of MySQL.

Answer 1

The CREATE USER statement needs a host-part when you define the user. Otherwise it will use the default ‘%’ and since the GRANT statement includes @’localhost’, you end up with a user with a password, and the other without.

mysql> CREATE USER 'reviews' IDENTIFIED BY 'reviews';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON reviews.* TO 'reviews'@'localhost';

Results in:

+---------+-------------------------------------------+-----------+
| user    | password                                  | host      |
+---------+-------------------------------------------+-----------+
| reviews | *03E3A1FBF4E68AB8F641C43AF6E952AFD967AFEA | %         |
| reviews |                                           | localhost |
+---------+-------------------------------------------+-----------+

Use the following to get what you want:

mysql> CREATE USER 'reviews'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'reviews';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON reviews.* TO 'reviews'@'localhost';

Note that it is best specify the database when you connect, otherwise you’ll need to change the default database after connecting:

shell> mysql -u reviews -p -D reviews