Said It Here

Where to find missing permissions after a software update

Software updates introduce new screens and sublists without documenting the required item permissions in the help notes, leaving users unable to clear persistent error messages. Additionally, manual updates can fail entirely when the system cannot automatically set permissions for the database user.

Overview
People affected3 accounts across 2 forums
Workarounds found3 items attempted
Community agreement13 total upvotes

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

Found another way around this?

Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.

  1. 1
    Adding the user to the database manually in CLI
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  2. 2
    Manually updating configuration files like wp-config.php
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  3. 3
    Deleting stale databases and users created by failed update attempts
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In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Netsuite1 person · September 2026

“And it seems the sublists at the bottom of this page need various permissions - but I can't see anywhere in the Help Notes what permissions to add!”source ↗

“If anyone has found the Item permission needed to stop the errors appearing on the new screen that would be very much appreciated.”source ↗

PaulF707 · r/Netsuite · 6 upvotes
r/Wordpress2 people · September 2026 – October 2026

“Smart Update could not be completed automatically. Please try running the update manually. Details: Failed to clone the installation: 'Failed to set permissions for database user: The request failed. (Error ID: a2n3z3)”source ↗

csdude5 · r/Wordpress · 5 upvotes

“Newbie here, I'm using WPBakery (recently updated to 9.0) in my site and I can't find the "column gap" setting that, according to all sources, should be under the settings of the row. Am I blind or what?”source ↗

drfelip74 · r/Wordpress · 2 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised