[CentOS] mysql can't connect from localhost -strange behavior

Mon Mar 30 03:27:05 UTC 2015
Tim Dunphy <bluethundr at gmail.com>

Hey all,

 I've been having some trouble creating a mysql user that can connect to
the database from localhost. It's always been a straight forward thing to
do in the past, so its time for a sanity check, if you guys don't mind.

Ok, so here's the actual command with actual simplified password that I'm
using. It's on localhost so I don't think it's a security threat unless
someone gets access to the box itself.

mysql> grant all privileges on ftp.* to 'proftpd'@'localhost' identified by
'testpattern';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.35 sec)

Here's what it looks like when you select it from the mysql database:

mysql> select User,Host,Password from user where User like 'proftpd';
+---------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
| User    | Host      | Password                                  |
+---------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
| proftpd | localhost | *2EE931CA39652F1ED359A3A36961511B387E74A9 |
+---------+-----------+-------------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

And here's my attempt to connect with the password shown. Which is
something I don't usually do, but am doing now to demonstrate what's going
on:

[root at ops:~] #mysql -uproftpd -ptestpattern  -h localhost
ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user 'proftpd'@'localhost' (using
password: YES)

OK, so as I've said this should work!

The database I'm trying to give the user access to does also exist:

mysql> show databases like 'ftp';
+----------------+
| Database (ftp) |
+----------------+
| ftp            |
+----------------+
1 row in set (0.34 sec)


I checked the error log for mysql and didn't find any clues there:

[root at ops:~] #grep log /etc/my.cnf
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log

[root at ops:~] #tail /var/log/mysqld.log
InnoDB: Restoring possible half-written data pages from the doublewrite
InnoDB: buffer...
150329 13:30:34  InnoDB: Waiting for the background threads to start
150329 13:30:35 InnoDB: 5.5.42 started; log sequence number 6071094973
150329 13:30:35 [Note] Server hostname (bind-address): '0.0.0.0'; port: 3306
150329 13:30:35 [Note]   - '0.0.0.0' resolves to '0.0.0.0';
150329 13:30:35 [Note] Server socket created on IP: '0.0.0.0'.
150329 13:30:35 [Note] Event Scheduler: Loaded 0 events
150329 13:30:35 [Note] /usr/libexec/mysqld: ready for connections.
Version: '5.5.42'  socket: '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock'  port: 3306  MySQL
Community Server (GPL) by Remi

Does anybody out there have any idea why this isn't working?

Thanks
Tim

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