Pixelastic

I wanted to give access to a database to a colleague, so he can connect and extract some useful stats from our database.

As I didn't want to give him nor the root, nor my access nor even an access with writing permission to avoid potential issues, I created a readonly user.

First, connect to the mysql server :

mysql --user=root -p

And type your password when asked

Now that you are in the mysql prompt, create the 'readonly' user and give him SELECT permission on all tables

CREATE USER 'readonly'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT SELECT ON *.* TO 'readonly'@'%';

Also note that once connected with root, you can see the list of users by running :

SELECT host,user,pass FROM mysql.user;

Nothing fancy here, everything was found after a few minutes of googling.

Also, if you ever need to delete the user :

DROP USER 'readonly'@'%';