MySQL: ERROR 1227 (42000): Access denied - Cannot CREATE USER - mysql

Question

I'm using MySQL 5.5.16 noinstall Zip Archive on Win7.
After I started the server, the command show databases showed me a list of 2 databases: information_schema and test. The latter is empty.
Where is the table user?
I tried to create a new user through this command create user newUser; and got the following error message: ERROR 1227 (42000): Access denied; you need (at least one of) the CREATE USER privilege(s) for this operation
What should I do to create, databases, tables, and do all the operations I want to do? I don't know if the fact that I'm using MySQL 5.5.16 noinstall Zip Archive has something to do with the error message?

Answer 1

First thing to do is run this:
SHOW GRANTS;
You will quickly see you were assigned the anonymous user to authenticate into mysql.
Instead of logging into mysql with
mysql
login like this:
mysql -uroot
By default, root#localhost has all rights and no password.
If you cannot login as root without a password, do the following:
Step 01) Add the two options in the mysqld section of my.ini:
[mysqld]
skip-grant-tables
skip-networking
Step 02) Restart mysql
net stop mysql
<wait 10 seconds>
net start mysql
Step 03) Connect to mysql
mysql
Step 04) Create a password from root#localhost
UPDATE mysql.user SET password=password('whateverpasswordyoulike')
WHERE user='root' AND host='localhost';
exit
Step 05) Restart mysql
net stop mysql
<wait 10 seconds>
net start mysql
Step 06) Login as root with password
mysql -u root -p
You should be good from there.
CAVEAT: Please remove anonymous users !!!

Answer 2

For me the issue was ( for a very strange reason ) the fact that root had Host of % instead of localhost
I received the above error when trying to DROP USER;
Privileges as suggested in the answer above - I already had, so the solution wasn't suitable for me.
The DB looked like this:
mysql> drop user 'testuser'#'%';
ERROR 1227 (42000): Access denied; you need (at least one of) the SYSTEM_USER privilege(s) for this operation
mysql> select Host,User,drop_priv from user;
+------+------------------+-----------+
| Host | User | drop_priv |
+------+------------------+-----------+
| % | mysql.infoschema | N |
| % | mysql.session | N |
| % | mysql.sys | N |
| % | root | Y |
+------+------------------+-----------+
And
mysql> SHOW GRANTS FOR 'root'#'%';
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 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 |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
I tried many things, but eventually I changed the Host from % to localhost for security concerns, nothing else.
mysql> UPDATE user SET Host='localhost' WHERE user='root' LIMIT 1;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.03 sec)
Rows matched: 1 Changed: 1 Warnings: 0
I don't know why, but it worked.
mysql> quit
$ mysql -u root -p
.. ENTER (NO PASSWORD) ..
mysql> drop user 'testuser'#'%';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
No idea why, but hope it will help others ...
I'm using CentOS which has SELinux and other stuff, which maybe other components are correlated with this. don't know.