How to check privileges in MySQL?

To check privileges, use SHOW command with GRANTS. Following is the syntax −

SHOW GRANTS;

The above syntax will show privileges for root. If you want to check privileges for a specific user, then use the below syntax −

SHOW GRANTS FOR 'yourUserName'@'yourHostName';

The above syntax will check privileges for a specific user.

Let us implement both the syntaxes one by one. Following is the query −

mysql> SHOW GRANTS;

The following is the output that displays root privileges −

+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for root@%
|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, RELOAD, SHUTDOWN, PROCESS, FILE, REFERENCES, INDEX, ALTER, SHOW DATABASES, SUPER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES, EXECUTE, REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT, CREATE VIEW, SHOW VIEW, CREATE ROUTINE, ALTER ROUTINE, CREATE USER, EVENT, TRIGGER, CREATE TABLESPACE, CREATE ROLE, DROP ROLE ON *.* TO `root`@`%` WITH GRANT OPTION |
| GRANT BACKUP_ADMIN,BINLOG_ADMIN,CONNECTION_ADMIN,ENCRYPTION_KEY_ADMIN,GROUP_REPLICATION_ADMIN,PERSIST_RO_VARIABLES_ADMIN,REPLICATION_SLAVE_ADMIN,RESOURCE_GROUP_ADMIN,RESOURCE_GROUP_USER,ROLE_ADMIN,SET_USER_ID,SYSTEM_VARIABLES_ADMIN,XA_RECOVER_ADMIN ON *.* TO `root`@`%`|
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.08 sec)

If you want to check the privileges for a specific user, then use FOR. Let’s say we have a username ‘Bob’ and host is ‘%’. Following is the query to get the privileges for user “BOB” −

mysql> SHOW GRANTS FOR 'Bob'@'%';

This will produce the following output −

+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Grants for Bob@%
|
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, RELOAD, SHUTDOWN, PROCESS, FILE, REFERENCES, INDEX, ALTER, SHOW DATABASES, SUPER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES, EXECUTE, REPLICATION SLAVE, REPLICATION CLIENT, CREATE VIEW, SHOW VIEW, CREATE ROUTINE, ALTER ROUTINE, CREATE USER, EVENT, TRIGGER, CREATE TABLESPACE, CREATE ROLE, DROP ROLE ON *.* TO `Bob`@`%` WITH GRANT OPTION |
| GRANT BACKUP_ADMIN,BINLOG_ADMIN,CONNECTION_ADMIN,ENCRYPTION_KEY_ADMIN,GR OUP_REPLICATION_ADMIN,PERSIST_RO_VARIABLES_ADMIN,REPLICATION_SLAVE_A DMIN,RESOURCE_GROUP_ADMIN,RESOURCE_GROUP_USER,ROLE_ADMIN,SET_USE R_ID,SYSTEM_VARIABLES_ADMIN,XA_RECOVER_ADMIN ON *.* TO `Bob`@`%` WITH GRANT OPTION |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)