17.3.3.2 Privilege Checks For Group Replication Channels

As well as securing asynchronous and semi-synchronous replication, you may choose to use a PRIVILEGE_CHECKS_USER account to secure the two replication applier threads used by Group Replication. The group_replication_applier thread on each group member is used for applying the group's transactions, and the group_replication_recovery thread on each group member is used for state transfer from the binary log as part of distributed recovery when the member joins or rejoins the group.

To secure one of these threads, issue the CHANGE MASTER TO statement with the PRIVILEGE_CHECKS_USER option, specifying group_replication_applier or group_replication_recovery as the channel name. For example:

For Group Replication channels, the REQUIRE_ROW_FORMAT setting is automatically enabled when the channel is created, and cannot be disabled, so you do not need to specify this.

If a remote cloning operation is used for distributed recovery in Group Replication (see Section 18.4.3.1, “Cloning for Distributed Recovery”), from MySQL 8.0.19, the PRIVILEGE_CHECKS_USER account and settings from the donor are cloned to the joining member. If the joining member is set to start Group Replication on boot, it automatically uses the account for the appropriate replication channels. In MySQL 8.0.18, the PRIVILEGE_CHECKS_USER account is cloned but the settings are not cloned, so you must assign the user account manually to the appropriate channels on the joining member.