> **Question**: I would like to create a new user account on MySQL server, and apply appropriate permissions and resource limits to the account. How can I create and configure a MySQL user from the command line?
To access a MySQL server, you need to log in to the server using a user account. Each MySQL user account has a number of attributes associated with it, such as user name, password, as well as privileges and resource limits. Privileges are user-specific permissions defining what you can do inside a MySQL server, while resource limits set the limitations on the amount of server resource allowed for for the user. Creating or updating a MySQL user involves managing all these attributes of the user account.
Here is how to create and configure a MySQL user on Linux.
You first log in to MySQL server as the root.
$ mysql -u root -p
When prompted for authentication, enter the MySQL root password.
To create a new user with username 'myuser' and password 'mypassword', use the following command.
mysql> CREATE USER 'myuser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';
Once a user is created, all its account details including an encrypted password, privileges and resource limits are stored in a table called **user** in a special database named **mysql**.
To verify that the account is created successfully, run:
mysql> SELECT host, user, password FROM mysql.user WHERE user='myuser';
### Grant Privileges to MySQL User ###
A newly created MySQL user comes with zero access privilege, which means that you cannot do anything inside MySQL server. You need to grant necessary privileges to the user. Some of available privileges are the following.
- **ALL**: all privileges available.
- **CREATE**: create databases, tables or indices.
- **LOCK_TABLES**: lock databases.
- **ALTER**: alter tables.
- **DELETE**: delete tables.
- **INSERT**: insert tables or columns.
- **SELECT**: select tables or columns.
- **CREATE_VIEW**: create views.
- **SHOW_DATABASES**: show databases.
- **DROP**: drop daabases, tables or views.
To grant a particular privilege to user 'myuser', use the following command.
mysql> GRANT <privileges> ON <database>.<table> TO 'myuser'@'localhost';
In the above, <privileges> is expressed as a comma-separated list of privileges. If you want to grant privileges for any database (or table), place an asterisk (*) in the database (or table) name.
For example, to grant CREATE and INSERT privileges for all databases/tables:
mysql> GRANT CREATE, INSERT ON *.* TO 'myuser'@'localhost';
