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5.4.7 Causes of Access denied Errors »
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5.4.6. When Privilege Changes Take Effect

When mysqld starts, it reads all grant table contents into memory. The in-memory tables become effective for access control at that point.

When the server reloads the grant tables, privileges for existing client connections are affected as follows:

  • Table and column privilege changes take effect with the client's next request.

  • Database privilege changes take effect at the next USE db_name statement.

    Note

    Client applications may cache the database name; thus, this effect may not be visible to them without actually changing to a different database or executing a FLUSH PRIVILEGES statement.

  • Changes to global privileges and passwords take effect the next time the client connects.

If you modify the grant tables indirectly using statements such as GRANT, REVOKE, or SET PASSWORD, the server notices these changes and loads the grant tables into memory again immediately.

If you modify the grant tables directly using statements such as INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE, your changes have no effect on privilege checking until you either restart the server or tell it to reload the tables. To reload the grant tables manually, issue a FLUSH PRIVILEGES statement or execute a mysqladmin flush-privileges or mysqladmin reload command.

If you change the grant tables directly but forget to reload them, your changes have no effect until you restart the server. This may leave you wondering why your changes do not seem to make any difference!