ERROR 1130 (HY000): Host '' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server

Question

Why oh why can I not connect to mysql?

mysql -u root -ptest101 -h xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ERROR 1130 (HY000): Host 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' is not allowed to connect to this MySQL server

In my.cnf I have the below

# Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on
# localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure.
bind-address        = 0.0.0.0

I also ran the below...

'UPDATE mysql.user SET Password = PASSWORD('test101') WHERE User = 'root';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

I can access on the host machine using mysql -u root -ptest101 but not using mysql -u root -ptest101 -h xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Wow...why is this happening? I am n ubuntj 12.04

mysql> SELECT host FROM mysql.user WHERE User = 'root';
+---------------------------------------------+
| host                                        |
+---------------------------------------------+
| %                                           |
| 127.0.0.1                                   |
| ::1                                         | |
| localhost                                   |
+---------------------------------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Answer 1

Your root account, and this statement applies to any account, may only have been added with localhost access (which is recommended).

You can check this with:

SELECT host FROM mysql.user WHERE User = 'root';

If you only see results with localhost and 127.0.0.1, you cannot connect from an external source. If you see other IP addresses, but not the one you're connecting from - that's also an indication.

You will need to add the IP address of each system that you want to grant access to, and then grant privileges:

CREATE USER 'root'@'ip_address' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'ip_address';

If you see %, well then, there's another problem altogether as that is "any remote source". If however you do want any/all systems to connect via root, use the % wildcard to grant access:

CREATE USER 'root'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'some_pass';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'root'@'%';

Finally, reload the permissions, and you should be able to have remote access:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;