Cannot grant MySQL user access to information_schema database

Question

I am creating a Laravel App and testing it in production mode on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 19.10.03. Fresh LAMP installation (PHP 7.3, MySQL 8.0.19-0).

I can create a new database, and a new user that has full access to the database, but Laravel requires that the user have the SELECT option from the 'information_schema' database as well. Here is the process I am using:

$ sudo mysql

mysql> CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS `my-laravel-database`;
mysql> CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS 'laravelUser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'myPass';
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `my-laravel-database`.* TO 'laravelUser'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
mysql> GRANT SELECT ON `information_schema`.* TO 'laravelUser'@'localhost';

The last command always returns

ERROR 1044 (4200): Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' to database 'information_schema'

I have tried running the mysql_secure_installation command to set the root password, this did not help. I can run the app as the root user, but I do not want to do this in production.

I have also tried a fresh installation of Ubuntu with just the LAMP services installed.

Answer 1

Try the following:

1. USE mysql;

2. ANALYZE TABLE db; In case table is broken run the following:

3. REPAIR TABLE db;

Then restart MySQL server.

Answer 2

I wasted DAYS on something tangential to this problem. The answer was in the MySQL manual :

For most INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables, each MySQL user has the right to access them , but can see only the rows in the tables that correspond to objects for which the user has the proper access privileges.

So you can't grant permission to INFORMATION_SCHEMA directly, you have to grant permission to the tables on your own schemas, and as you do, those tables will start showing up in INFORMATION_SCHEMA queries.

Unfortunate, because I'd love have a user who's able to see INFORMATION_SCHEMA , but not the content of the actual tables, and there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.