Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' while attempting to grant privileges. How do I grant privileges?

I also had the same problem with this but on Windows after upgrading to MySQL 5.5 from MySQL 5.1. I already tried changing, creating, and resetting password mentioned in here, here, here, and here, no clue. I still get the same error:

ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES)

I'm able to connect normally, show all databases, do selects and inserts, create and add users, and but when it comes to GRANT, I'm screwed up. Those access denied error shows up again.

I managed to solve this problem by fixing the privileges by the following command on the MySQL server bin/ directory as mentioned in here:

C:\MySQL Server 5.5\bin> mysql_upgrade

Then, the problem gone away. I hope this solution works on Linux too since usually MySQL provide the same command both on Linux and Windows.

This might happen when you attempt to grant all privileges on all tables to another user, because the mysql.users table is considered off-limits for a user other than root.

The following however, should work:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `%`.* TO '[user]'@'[hostname]' IDENTIFIED BY '[password]' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Note that we use `%`.* instead of *.*

Notice how the output of

SHOW GRANTS FOR 'root'@'localhost';

did not say 'ALL PRIVILEGES' but had to spell out what root@localhost has.

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES will fail, because a user can not grant what he/she does not have, and the server seem to think something is not here ...

Now, what's missing then ?

On my system, I get this:

mysql> select version();
+------------+
| version()  |
+------------+
| 5.5.21-log |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SHOW GRANTS FOR 'root'@'localhost';
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for root@localhost                                           |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION |
| GRANT PROXY ON ''@'' TO 'root'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION        |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM mysql.user WHERE User='root' and Host='localhost'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
                  Host: localhost
                  User: root
              Password: 
           Select_priv: Y
           Insert_priv: Y
           Update_priv: Y
           Delete_priv: Y
           Create_priv: Y
             Drop_priv: Y
           Reload_priv: Y
         Shutdown_priv: Y
          Process_priv: Y
             File_priv: Y
            Grant_priv: Y
       References_priv: Y
            Index_priv: Y
            Alter_priv: Y
          Show_db_priv: Y
            Super_priv: Y
 Create_tmp_table_priv: Y
      Lock_tables_priv: Y
          Execute_priv: Y
       Repl_slave_priv: Y
      Repl_client_priv: Y
      Create_view_priv: Y
        Show_view_priv: Y
   Create_routine_priv: Y
    Alter_routine_priv: Y
      Create_user_priv: Y
            Event_priv: Y
          Trigger_priv: Y
Create_tablespace_priv: Y <----------------------------- new column in 5.5
              ssl_type: 
            ssl_cipher: 
           x509_issuer: 
          x509_subject: 
         max_questions: 0
           max_updates: 0
       max_connections: 0
  max_user_connections: 0
                plugin: <------------------------------- new column in 5.5
 authentication_string: <------------------------------- new column in 5.5
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

There are also new tables in 5.5, such as mysql.proxies_user: make sure you have them.

When installing a brand new mysql server instance, the install script will create all the mysql.* tables with the proper structure.

When upgrading from an old version, make sure the proper upgrade procedure (mysql_upgrade) is used, which will add the missing tables / columns.

It is only a guess, but it seems mysql_upgrade was not done for this instance, causing the behavior seen.

You may have come to this question with MySQL version 8 installed (like me) and not found a satisfactory answer. You can no longer create users like this in version 8:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'steves'@'[hostname].com' IDENTIFIED BY '[OBSCURED]' WITH GRANT OPTION;

The rather confusing error message that you get back is: ERROR 1410 (42000): You are not allowed to create a user with GRANT

In order to create users in version 8 you have to do it in two steps:

CREATE USER 'steves'@'[hostname].com' IDENTIFIED BY '[OBSCURED]';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'steves'@'[hostname].com' WITH GRANT OPTION;

Of course, if you prefer, you can also supply a limited number of privileges (instead of GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES), e.g. GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, ALTER

This happened to me when I tried to install a higher MySQL version than the one coming with the distribution.

I erased the old version then installed the new one (rpm -e ... then rpm -i MySQL-server* ) But did not realize that the files in /var/lib/mysql were still from the older version (with differences as explained by Marc Alff - thanks!)

I could have done an mysql_upgrade, but as I wanted to start from scratch I did:

# su - mysql
$ rm -rf /var/lib/mysql/*
$ mysql_install_db
# /etc/init.d/mysql start

Then set root password (/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password), and all worked as expected with the GRANT commands...

I had the same problem, i.e. all privileges granted for root:

SHOW GRANTS FOR 'root'@'localhost'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
Grants for root@localhost: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*[blabla]' WITH GRANT OPTION

...but still not allowed to create a table:

 create table t3(id int, txt varchar(50), primary key(id));
ERROR 1142 (42000): CREATE command denied to user 'root'@'localhost' for table 't3'

Well, it was cause by an annoying user error, i.e. I didn't select a database. After issuing USE dbname it worked fine.

Basically this error comes when you have not specified a password, it means that you have an incorrect password listed in some option file.

Read this DOC on understanding how to assign and manage Passwords to accounts.

Also , Check if the permission on the folder /var/lib/mysql/mysql is 711 or not.

On Debian (Wheezy, 7.8) with MySQL 5.5.40, I found SELECT * FROM mysql.user WHERE User='root'\G showed the Event_priv and 'Trigger_priv` fields were present but not set to Y.

Running mysql_upgrade (with or without --force) made no difference; I needed to do a manual:

update user set Event_priv = 'Y',Trigger_priv = 'Y' where user = 'root'

Then finally I could use:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH GRANT OPTION

…and then use it more precisely on an individual database/user account.

I had the same problem and it took a lot of reading SO posts and Google's documentation. I finally found this from the Cloud SQL FAQ:

Google Cloud SQL does not support SUPER privileges, which means that GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES statements will not work. As an alternative, you can use GRANT ALL ON `%`.*

Typing SHOW GRANTS FOR 'root'@'localhost'; showed me some obscured password, so I logged into mysql of that system using HeidiSQL on another system (using root as the username and the corresponding password) and typed
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'thepassword' WITH GRANT OPTION;

and it worked when I went back to the system and logged on using
mysql -uroot -pthepassword;

I run at this when I tried to add privileges to performance_schema, which is mysql bug http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=44898 (workaround to add --single-transaction).

For those who still stumble upon this like I did, it's worth checking to make sure the attempted GRANT does not already exist:

SHOW GRANTS FOR username;

In my case, the error was not actually because there was a permission error, but because the GRANT already existed.

One simple solution which always works for me when faced with mysql "access denied" errors: use sudo.

sudo mysql -u root

Then the necessary permissions exist for GRANT commands.