How to create a MySQL user and configure access rights

To create a user, we first connect to the MySQL server console:

mysql

Let’s see what users are:

select * from mysql.user;
select user,host from mysql.user;

Create a user (where localhost is specified from where the user can connect, you can specify the IP address, localhost – from the local machine where the MySQL server itself, or % from any addresses):

CREATE USER 'user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

If you intend to connect not only locally, you need to comment out the line in my.cnf:

#bind-address = 127.0.0.1

And restart the MySQL server:

sudo service mysql restart

After that, I recommend restricting access to MySQL using IPTables.
See also – Configuring IPTables

To assign the newly created user unlimited permissions to a specific database, execute the following command:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON database_name.* TO 'user'@'localhost';

If necessary on all bases:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user'@'localhost';

You can specify specific access rights:

GRANT SELECT ON database_name.* TO 'user'@'localhost';
GRANT SELECT, INSERT ON database_name.table_name TO user@192.168.1.5;

If you want to create a new database:

CREATE DATABASE database_name;

For the changes to take effect, execute:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

You can delete the user as follows:

DROP USER 'user'@'localhost';

Example of viewing privileges:

SHOW GRANTS FOR 'user'@'localhost';
SHOW GRANTS;
SELECT * FROM information_schema.user_privileges;