How to add global privileges for a MySQL user manually

Introduction

This article will provide an overview of adding privileges for a MySQL user that can not be done in cPanel by default.

Please note that as this is not supported in the cPanel UI, cPanel support can not provide assistance with or add these grants on your behalf. Additionally, adding grants such as this for users will cause significant issues when attempting to restore backups for users with these privileges as restoring them is a security risk, as such, this is not recommended or supported in cPanel.

Procedure

First, you will need to connect to the server via SSH as the root user and log into MySQL by typing mysql on the command line:

[root@test ~]# mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 23170
Server version: 5.7.33 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2021, Oracle and/or its affiliates.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql>

Next, the grant statement can be issued for the user in question:

grant $priv ON *.* TO '$db-user'@'localhost';

Example:

mysql> grant RELOAD on *.* to 'cptech'@'localhost';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

More information about the various roles and what they do can be found in the MySQL documentation here.