I seem to be unable to re-create a simple user I’ve deleted, even as root in MySQL.
My case: user ‘jack’ existed before, but I deleted it from mysql.user in order to recreate it. I see no vestiges of this in that table. If I execute this command for some other, random username, say ‘jimmy’, it works fine (just as it originally did for ‘jack’).
What have I done to corrupt user ‘jack’ and how can I undo that corruption in order to re-create ‘jack’ as a valid user for this installation of MySQL?
See example below. (Of course, originally, there was much time between the creation of ‘jack’ and his removal.)
mysql> CREATE USER 'jack'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'test123';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select user,host from user;
+------------------+-----------------+
| user | host |
+------------------+-----------------+
| root | 127.0.0.1 |
| debian-sys-maint | localhost |
| jack | localhost |
| root | localhost |
| root | russ-elite-book |
+------------------+-----------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> delete from user where user="jack";
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select user,host from user;
+------------------+-----------------+
| user | host |
+------------------+-----------------+
| root | 127.0.0.1 |
| debian-sys-maint | localhost |
| root | localhost |
| root | russ-elite-book |
+------------------+-----------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> CREATE USER 'jack'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'test123';
ERROR 1396 (HY000): Operation CREATE USER failed for 'jack'@'localhost'
mysql> CREATE USER 'jimmy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'test123';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> select user,host from user;
+------------------+-----------------+
| user | host |
+------------------+-----------------+
| root | 127.0.0.1 |
| debian-sys-maint | localhost |
| jimmy | localhost |
| root | localhost |
| root | russ-elite-book |
+------------------+-----------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)