You need to grant the privs to allow the connection. They mysql homepage has a set of docs at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/. More specifically this link which talks about setting up the grant tables
 
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/post-installation.html
 
You could also use phpmyadmin to have a nice frontend to the mysql server system (http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/index.php).
 
Some things to consider: (since you said you were a newbie)
1. If no remote apps are going to be connecting the sql server port (ie only local programs relative to the system), do not open iptables for the sql server port.
1b. configure the /etc/my.cnf file to tell mysql to use local sockets and not listen on a port (skip-networking option).
2. When adding users, never grant a user profile in the mysql table any privs (excluding the default root which you should also rename to something else) as doing so would allow the user those rights across all databases. Instead grant users access via the mysql::db table.
 
Also there is alot of good how-to docs at http://www.hughesjr.com/ for centos, specifically http://www.hughesjr.com/content/view/13/30/Guides
 
-greg

From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Stephen A. Wright
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 4:47 AM
To: centos@centos.org
Subject: [CentOS] centos & mysql

Hi everyone, as a newbie to linux Im having a but of a problem getting up and running.  Hopefully one of you you can point me in the right direction.  I have installed Centos4 on an old server here at work as a dev box, installation went well, and I have mysql up and running.  However when I try and connect from my laptop using mysql administrator I get an error saying “the host is not allowed to connect to this server” I tried disabling the firewall to see if that helped and it made no difference.  I also tried pinging the server and that was fine.

 

I tried connecting using the servers ip, name localhost and password as blank.

When im logged in a root on the server this allows be to login ok.

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Steve