The Ultimate Guide to High Availability with MariaDB
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Cannot create user account

Server version: 10.0.23-MariaDB Fedora 23 64 bit

I am logged in as root.

MariaDB [(none)]> create user brown@localhost ;
ERROR 1396 (HY000): Operation CREATE USER failed for 'brown'@'localhost'

Syntax is correct, yet, as can be seen, it fails. What am I doing wrong?

Answer Answered by Daniel Bartholomew in this comment.

That query should work if you're logged in as the MariaDB root user.

To debug I would first check to make sure you are logged in as root with:

SELECT USER(),CURRENT_USER();

The output should be something like the following:

MariaDB [(none)]> SELECT USER(),CURRENT_USER();
+----------------+----------------+
| USER()         | CURRENT_USER() |
+----------------+----------------+
| root@localhost | root@localhost |
+----------------+----------------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]>

Then issue a SHOW GRANTS to check what your logged-in user's permissions are.

The root user should have permissions similar to the following:

MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW GRANTS;
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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)

MariaDB [(none)]>
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