Wildcard Host not working in MariaDB (MySQL)

Question

I try to add a user to my database using phpMyAdmin.

When I add the user the following way everything works fine:

UserName: user Password: pass Host: localhost

But when I create the same user and use "%" instead of localhost he cannot log in (even from localhost)

What can be the issue here?

(Update): This is the command that is generated:

CREATE USER 'user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '***';GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY '***' WITH GRANT OPTION MAX_QUERIES_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_CONNECTIONS_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_UPDATES_PER_HOUR 0 MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS 0

(password has been removed by phpmyadmin)

Answer 1

Make sure you don't have any Anonymous Users.

From the Mysql Documentation

If you cannot figure out why you get Access denied, remove from the user table all entries that have Host values containing wildcards (entries that contain % or _ characters). A very common error is to insert a new entry with Host='%' and User='some_user', thinking that this enables you to specify localhost to connect from the same machine. The reason that this does not work is that the default privileges include an entry with Host='localhost' and User=''. Because that entry has a Host value localhost that is more specific than %, it is used in preference to the new entry when connecting from localhost! The correct procedure is to insert a second entry with Host='localhost' and User='some_user', or to delete the entry with Host='localhost' and User=''. After deleting the entry, remember to issue a FLUSH PRIVILEGES statement to reload the grant tables.