How To Create New User and Set, Grant Permissions To User In MySQL and MariaDB?

MySQL provides the ability to create and users from its shell. Security is an important part of the database servers. In this tutorial, we will examine how to create users and manage privileges in MySQL database server. We will specifically learn to restrict user access to a database, database server, grant different types of privileges, print these privileges.

Login To MySQL Shell

In order to create a user and manage the privileges of this user, we will log in to the MySQL shell. MySQL shell provides the ability to access databases, run SQL queries, administrative operations like create user, delete user, manage user privileges. We will use mysql command with the user name which is root in this case. We will provide the root user password too.

$ sudo mysql -u root -p

Create New Database User

We will use CREATE USER command by providing the user name, hostname, and password. The hostname is used to set whether the user can connect from a given host. In this example, we specify the localhost which means given user  ismail can only connect from localhost to this database server. We also provide the password as SoS3cret..!

> CREATE USER 'ismail'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'SoS3cret..!';

As it is successfully created Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)  is printed.

Remove Existing Database User

If we do not need a given database user we have to remove users because it may create security problems and unintended database access. We can remove the existing database user with the DROP USER command by providing the user name and access hostname. In this example, we will remove user ismail with localhost access.

> DROP USER ismail@localhost;

List Existing Database Users

After creating a database user we may want to check and list existing users in the MySQL database. In this case, we will use an SQL statement that will list the content of the mysql database user table. user table in the mysql database holds database server users and related information like password etc. We will use SELECT User statement.

> SELECT User FROM mysql.user;

Create New User with To Access Specific Database

We can specify a user only access to the specified databases. This will prevent user access to other databases. We will use GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES command in this case by providing the database name, user name, and hostname. In the following example, we will grant all privileges of the database poftut to the user ismail .

> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON poftut . * TO 'ismail'@'localhost';

Write Changes To Database

Changes may be stored in the cache which will not effective immediately. We can write these changes into the database server explicitly with the following command.

> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Create New User with Access Location

We can also specify the access location for the given user and database. Up to now, we have used the localhost which is a secure way where only local users can access. We can also provide access rights for specific networks or hosts. In this example, we will provide access from the IP Address 192.168.1.10 .

> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON poftut . * TO 'ismail'@'192.168.1.10';

Show and List Given User Privileges

We may want to list granted privileges for the given user. We will use SHOW GRANTS FOR command for this operation. In this example, we will list granted privileges for the user ismail access from localhost.

> SHOW GRANTS FOR ismail@localhost;