ERROR 1396 (HY000): Operation CREATE USER failed for 'jack'@'localhost'

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)

yes this bug is there. However, I found a small workaround.

• Assume the user is there, so drop the user
• After deleting the user, there is need to flush the mysql privileges
• Now create the user.

That should solve it. Assuming we want to create the user admin @ localhost, these would be the commands:

drop user admin@localhost;
flush privileges;
create user admin@localhost identified by 'admins_password'

Cheers

Try doing a FLUSH PRIVILEGES;. This MySQL bug post on that error code appears to report some success in a case similar to yours after flushing privs. 

This bug has been sitting on bugs.mysql.com since 2007 and this thread is mainly just a parroting of all those wrong answers even up to a year ago.

According to the MySQL documentation, commands like CREATE USER, GRANT, REVOKE, and DROP USER do not require a subsequent FLUSH PRIVILEGES command. It's quite clear why, if one reads the docs. It's because altering the MySQL tables directly does not reload the info into memory; yet the plethora of solutions to this bug claim that FLUSH PRIVILEGES is the answer.

This also may not even be a bug. It is a documentation conspiracy - docs vary in one critical place from version to version.

13.7.1.2. DROP USER Syntax

...

> DROP USER user [, user] ...

...

> DROP USER 'jeffrey'@'localhost';

If you specify only the user name part of the account name, a host name part of '%' is used.

DROP USER as present in MySQL 5.0.0 removes only accounts that have no privileges. In MySQL 5.0.2, it was modified to remove account privileges as well. This means that the procedure for removing an account depends on your version of MySQL.

As of MySQL 5.0.2, you can remove an account and its privileges as follows:

> DROP USER user;

The statement removes privilege rows for the account from all grant tables.

The only time I get this error is when I do DROP USER user; like the doc suggests, but MySQL does not treat the '%' as a wildcard in a way that would drop all users at all hosts. It's not so wild after all. Or, it may be that it sometimes works when it deletes the localhost user and then tries to delete the one at %.

It's clear to me that when it tries to delete the user at %, it issues an error message and quits. Subsequent CREATE USER at localhost will fail because the localhost user was never deleted. There seems to be no need to waste time digging in the grant tables looking for ghosts as one poster suggested.

I see 7 votes for:

> DROP USER 'jack@localhost'; // completely delete the account

Which is interpreted as DROP USER 'jack@localhost'@'%'; # wrong

There actually seems to be a real bug that generates the same error message, but it has to do with the first created user (after a new mysql server install) being dropped. Whether that bug has been fixed, I don't know; but I don't recall that happening lately and I'm up to ver 5.5.27 at this time.

If you use a DELETE statement on the mysql.user table in an attempt to remove a user, then attempt to re-establish the user with CREATE USER, you will get a 1396 error. Get rid of this error by running DROP USER 'username'@'host';

DELETE 
  FROM mysql.user 
 WHERE user = 'jack';

(You will get 1396 errors if you attempt to re-create jack)

CREATE USER 'jack'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY PASSWORD '*Fi47ytFF3CD5B14E7EjkjkkC1D3F8086A5C0-krn';

(Get out of this situation by running DROP USER)

DROP USER 'jack'@'localhost';

(I suppose FLUSH PRIVILEGES can't hurt, but definitely drop the user first.)

You shouldn't be manually deleting users that way. MySQL has REVOKE syntax for removing privileges and DROP USER for deleting them:

REVOKE priv1,priv2,priv3,etc... FROM 'jack@localhost'; // remove certain privileges
DROP USER 'jack@localhost'; // completely delete the account

Best to use the tools provided rather than mucking around in the background.

Drop the user, flush the privileges; then, create the user. It does work!

try delete from mysql.db where user = 'jack' and then create a user

Check if is > 'user'@'%'

or

> 'user'@'localhost'

In MySQL 5.6 using Drop user userid; does not work. Use: Drop user 'userid'@'localhost'; and/or Drop user 'userid'@'%';. In this way I was able to drop the user and recreate it.

two method 
one :
setp 1: drop user 'jack'@'localhost';
setp 2: create user 'jack'@localhost identified by 'ddd';

two:
setp 1: delete from user where user='jack'and host='localhost';
setp 2: flush privileges;
setp 3: create user 'jack'@'localhost' identified by 'ddd';

I had the same error. But command "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" didn't help. I did like that:

CREATE USER 'jimmy'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'test123';
UPDATE mysql.user SET USER='jack' WHERE USER='jimmy';

If you want to delete a user with sql, you need to delete the related data in these tables: columns_priv, db, procs_priv, tables_priv. Then execute flush privileges;

BUG of MySql Solved: Error Code-1396

• Whenever you had try to run query which create a User as Shown Below. MySql> CREATE USER 'springstudent'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'springstudent'; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON * . * TO 'springstudent'@'localhost';
• But when you try to run query which create user within all previleges, Due to bug it create gives previleges without showing user
• Because of this Problem we need to use this script for flush priviledges MySql> drop user 'springstudent'@'localhost'; flush privileges; create user admin@localhost identified by 'admins_password'
• After deleting the user, there is need to flush the mysql privileges
• Then Create User again

Gotchaaa.... Solved....

A simple work around on this issue. As "delete" command only removes the user record in "user" table of "mysql" database, we could add it back and then drop the user completely. Then you could create user with same name.

Step 1. find the record format of user table in mysql database

use mysql;
select * from user;

Step 2. According to the columns showed in step1, create a dummy record with the user name. Insert it into the table, for example, be reminded to replace the "username" with your username.

Insert into user value ('%','username','N','N','N','N','N',
'N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N',
'N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','N','','','','','0','0','0',
'0','mysql_native_password',
'*52C5E3AC6BC5E2E0BFF86978BF62A1481AC79D58','N',
'2016-12-10 23:59:12',null,'N');

Note: sometimes you may encounter issues in inserting, just change the data to make it work.

Step 3. Drop the user.

drop user username;

Now you are able to create user with same name.

Funnily enough the MySQL workbench solved it for me. In the Administration tab -> Users and Privileges, the user was listed with an error. Using the delete option solved the problem.

Seems you need to create user for your database and grant privileges for created user

--> create user for Data base

CREATE  USER <'username'>@'%'IDENTIFIED BY <'password'>;

ex - CREATE USER 'root'@'%'IDENTIFIED BY 'root';

--> Grant Privileges

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON <db name>.* TO '<username>'@'%';

ex- GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON mydb.* TO 'root'@'%';

This post https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10299148/mysql-error-1045-28000-access-denied-for-user-billlocalhost-using-passw is useful. Sometimes, there is an anonymous user ''@'localhost' or ''@'127.0.0.1'. So, to solve the problem,

1. first drop the user whose 'create user' failed.

2. Create new user.

3. Grant required privileges to the new user.

4. Flush privileges.

I faced this issue today, and I resolved it by doing the following steps:

1. manually inserting that troubling user providing value of mandatory fields into mysql.user

mysql> insert into user(Host, User, Password, ssl_type) 
   values ('localhost', 'jack', 'jack', 'ANY');

mysql> select * from user where User = 'jack';
   1 row in set (0.00 sec)

3. A.

mysql> drop user jack;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

B. mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

C. mysql> create user 'jack' identified by 'jack';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

D. mysql> select Host, User, Password, ssl_type  from user where User = 'jack';
+-----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
| Host      | User      | Password                                  | ssl_type |
+-----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
| localhost | jack      | jack                                      | ANY      |
| %         | jack      | *45BB7035F11303D8F09B2877A00D2510DCE4D758 |          |
+-----------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

4. A.

mysql> delete from user 
 where User = 'nyse_user' and 
       Host = 'localhost' and 
       Password ='nyse';
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

B.

mysql> select Host, User, Password, ssl_type  from user where User = 'jack';
+------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
| Host | User      | Password                                  | ssl_type |
+------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
| %    | jack      | *45BB7035F11303D8F09B2877A00D2510DCE4D758 |          |
+------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Hope this helps.

I had the same problem as OP, and the accepted answer did not work for me. In the comments of the accepted answer, @Rathish posted a solution which worked for me, I wanted to call attention to it.

Here's the link:

https://www.rathishkumar.in/2018/10/Error-1396-HY000-Operation-CREATE-DROP-USER-failed-for-user-host.html

Rathish's solution is to revoke access for all users:

REVOKE ALL ON *.* FROM 'user'@'host';
DROP USER 'user'@'host';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

And he also helpfully points out that you can query the following tables by selecting "user" and "host" to determine whether you have a vestigial user left-over from a previous operation:

mysql.user: User accounts, global privileges, and other non-privilege columns
mysql.db: Database-level privileges
mysql.tables_priv: Table-level privileges
mysql.columns_priv: Column-level privileges
mysql.procs_priv: Stored procedure and function privileges
mysql.proxies_priv: Proxy-user privilege

Thank you!

Step 1) Open MySQL Command Line Client.

Step 2) Check all the users using : select user, host from mysql.user;

Step 3) Delete the user using : drop user username@localhost;

Step 4) Again create user using MySQL GUI.

Step 5) Problem is solved now.

The MySQL server is running with the --skip-grant-tables option so it cannot execute this statement

I know this is old, but since it is the first result in Google I figured I should add my solution. In my case dropping the user worked fine, but recreating the user gave me a "ERROR 2013 (HY000): Lost connection to MySQL server during query" and "ERROR 2006 (HY000): MySQL server has gone away." I tried the flush privileges -> drop user solution, but still had the same error.

In my case the error was due to a mysql upgrade from 5.1 -> 5.6. Viewing the error logs, I noticed that it said to run mysql_upgrade. Did that and my create user statement worked fine!

I recently got this error.

What worked for me is checking in the mysql workbench 'Users and Privileges' and realizing user still existed.

After deleting it from there, I was able to recreate the user.

mysql> DELETE FROM mysql.db WHERE user = 'jack'

Restart the server:

# mysql.server restart

Then do your CREATE USER command.

My experience with this error resulted from me doing explicit delete from mysql.user, but not from mysql.db

Turns out if the user name in the create exists is in either user or db, you get this error. Solve by doing delete from mysql.user where User == 'user@bar'; delete from mysql.db where User == 'user@bar';

replace localhost by 127.0.0.1

it works for me

Just delete the user related data from mysql.db(maybe from other tables too), then recreate both.

I had also faced the same issue, after few searches, I found a solution that worked for me.I hope it will help you. As you have already created users, now try to do a FLUSH PRIVILEGES on your Mysql console. This issue is already in MySql bug post.You can also check this one.Now after flushing, you can create a new user. follow below Steps:

Step-1: Open terminal Ctrl+Alt+T
Step-2: mysql -u root -p  , it will ask for your MySQL password.

Now you can able to see Mysql console.

Step-3: CREATE USER 'username'@'host' IDENTIFIED by 'PASSWORD';

Instead of username you can put username you want. If you are running Mysql on your local machine, then type "localhost" instead of the host, otherwise give your server name you want to access.

Ex: CREATE USER smruti@localhost IDENTIFIED by 'hello';

Now new user is created. If you want to give all access then type

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

Now you can quit the MySQL by typing \q.Now once again login through

mysql -u newusername -p , then press Enter. You can see everything.

Hope this helps.