Are Users 'User'@'%' and 'User'@'localhost' not the same?

Question

I created a user per the first command but cannot logon via localhost (linux). This link mysqldoc indicates that I need to create a second user by the same name, but usin

Answer 1

I encountered the same situation as described - Adding an entry for user@% was not working.

Yet adding an entry for the same user@localhost would start to work again though. This did seem unintuitive, given our understanding of the % pattern!

An issue identified by Kent above was that: We had an entry row in the users table for host:localhost but the user was blank. This apparently resolved to a rule for %@localhost which was being used as a match before my user@% rule.

Short answer - check for blank or wildcard usernames in your user table.

... I have no idea how that blank got there or if it was intentional.