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MySQL Enterprise Monitor 2.1 :: 2 Installation and Upgrades :: 2.3 Monitor Agent Installation :: 2.3.1 Creating a MySQL User Account for the Monitor Agent
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2.3.1. Creating a MySQL User Account for the Monitor Agent

Before setting up an agent to monitor a MySQL server you need to ensure that there is a user account for the agent on that server.

The privileges required for this user account vary depending on the information you wish to gather using the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent. The following privileges allow the Monitor Agent to perform its assigned duties without limitation:

  • SHOW DATABASES: Allows the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent to gather inventory about the monitored MySQL server.

  • REPLICATION CLIENT: Allows the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent to gather Replication master/slave status data. This privilege is only needed if the MySQL Replication Advisor Rules are employed.

  • SELECT: Allows the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent to collect statistics for table objects.

  • SUPER: Allows the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent to execute SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS in order to collect data about InnoDB tables.

  • PROCESS: When monitoring a MySQL server running MySQL 5.1.24 or above with InnoDB, the PROCESS privilege is required to execute SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS.

  • INSERT: Required to create the UUID required by the agent.

  • CREATE: Allows the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent to create tables. During discovery, the agent creates the table inventory within the mysql database that is used to the UUID for the server. Without this table, the agent cannot determine the UUID of the server and therefore use this when sending information to MySQL Enterprise Service Manager.

For example, the following GRANT statement will give the agent the required SELECT, REPLICATION CLIENT, SHOW DATABASES and SUPER rights: 

GRANT SELECT, REPLICATION CLIENT, SHOW DATABASES, SUPER, PROCESS
  ON *.*
  TO  'mysqluser'@'localhost'
  IDENTIFIED BY 'agent_password';

For security reasons, you may wish to limit the CREATE and INSERT privileges to the agent so that it can only create tables within the mysql database: 

GRANT CREATE, INSERT
  ON mysql.*
  TO  'mysqluser'@'localhost'
  IDENTIFIED BY 'agent_password';

To enable replication discovery to work, you should also grant the SELECT privilege on the mysql.inventory table for each user with replication privileges on the corresponding replication master. This is required to let the MySQL Enterprise Monitor Agent read the replication master UUID. For example: 

GRANT SELECT
  ON mysql.inventory
  TO  'replicationuser'@'%'
  IDENTIFIED BY 'replication_password';

Note

You should perform this step after after having run the agent on the corresponding MySQL server to ensure that the mysql.inventory table has been correctly created. You can do this by running the agent, shutting the agent down, running the above GRANT statement, and then restarting the agent.

If the agent is unable to access the information from the table then a warning containing this information will be written to the agent log.

Note

You may want to disable logging for the grant statement to prevent the grant information being replicated to the slaves. If this is the case, execute the statement SET SQL_LOG_BIN=0 before you execute the above GRANT statement.

In a typical configuration, the agent runs on the same machine as the MySQL server it is monitoring so the host name will be localhost. However, this will change if the agent is running on a machine other than the one that hosts the monitored MySQL server. In this case, change localhost to the appropriate value. For more information about remote monitoring see Section 2.3.6.4, “Configuring an Agent to Monitor a Remote MySQL Server”.