For most backup operations, the mysqlbackup command connects to the MySQL server through --user and --password options. This user requires certain privileges. You can either create a new user with a minimal set of privileges, or use an administrative account such as the root user.

The minimum privileges for the MySQL user that mysqlbackup connects are:

To set these privileges for a MySQL user (mysqlbackup in this example) connecting from localhost, issue statements like the following from the mysql client program:

GRANT RELOAD ON *.* TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';
GRANT CREATE, INSERT, DROP, UPDATE ON mysql.backup_progress TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';
GRANT CREATE, INSERT, SELECT, DROP, UPDATE ON mysql.backup_history TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';
GRANT REPLICATION CLIENT ON *.* TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';
GRANT SUPER ON *.* TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';

The following additional privileges are required for using transportable tablespaces (TTS) to back up and restore InnoDB tables:

To set these privileges, issue a statement like the following from the mysql client program:

GRANT LOCK TABLES, SELECT, CREATE, ALTER ON *.* TO 'mysqlbackup'@'localhost';