What is this host?

Question

I found this in my local MySQL installation today:

mysql> select host, user from user;
+--------------+---------+
| host         | user    |
+--------------+---------+
| ::1          | root    |
| ... others...| etc.    |
+--------------+---------+

What is the host ::1? Should I delete it? I only need to log in from localhost.

Answer 1

::1 Localhost is the equivalent to 127.0.0.1 Localhost but using IPv6 protocol format

to clarify further:

:: is an abbreviation for zeros, so this entry really means

0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0001 localhost

Answer 2

That is the IPV6 representation of 127.0.0.1

I wrote an earlier post on this.

MySQL 5.5 started embedding this upon initial installation. It's OK to leave it if you assign 'root'@'::1' a password. If you do not want it to have a password, then you can drop that user.

@Jakub mentioned the direct answer first, so he gets a +1 from me !!!

If you want to remove it, you could run either

DROP USER 'root'@'::1';

or

DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE user='root' AND host='::1';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

If you are using only root@localhost and want to eliminate all other root users, do this:

DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE user='root' AND host<>'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;