How to fix Access denied for user ‘user_name’@’host’ in MySQL?

MySQL might return this error when you try to connect to a MySQL Server:

Error 1045 - Access denied for user 'user_name'@'host'...

This is one of the most common errors in MySQL. It typically means you are trying to connect using a user account that doesn’t have enough privileges to connect.

By default, after installation, MySQL only allows localhost connection and blocks any remote connection attempts until the user privileges get re-configure properly. That explains why you can’t connect from a remote client while other server-side programs seem to connect without any issues.

To establish a remote connection, you have to re-configure it and give it proper privileges:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user_name'@'host' IDENTIFIED BY "password";

Or:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user_name'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY "Password";

For testing purpose, you can start the server with the --skip-grant-tables option:

$ mysqld --skip-grant-tables

Then you can access the MySQL grant tables using the SHOW GRANTS statement to check the privileges and change if you want:

SHOW GRANTS FOR 'user'@'host';

When finished, flush privileges:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

If the issue arises with the root account only after upgrading MySQL, it’s likely the authentication plugin has changed to auth_socket by default. So what you can do it to change the authentication method from auth_socket to mysql_native_password:

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'password';

Then flush privileges:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

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