ERROR 1221 (HY000): Incorrect usage of DB GRANT and GLOBAL PRIVILEGES

In previous articles, we have learned about user creation and grants in MySQL in detail, but there are a few privileges called global privileges that are meant to be granted to DBA accounts only
for example
PROCESS privileges is a global privilege. 
we will try to grant it to user tech_user on author database

mysql>grant process on author.* to tech_user;

ERROR 1221 (HY000): Incorrect usage of DB GRANT and GLOBAL PRIVILEGES

Here we see it failed with error 1221 (HY000).

In order to resolve this error, we need to reconsider this grant statement and its usage.
we must know global privileges can not be granted to the individual database, instead, it should be on all databases. i.e. use of *.* instead of an author.*

so the statement should look like this

grant process on *.* to tech_user;

Below are some of the well know global privileges

• FILE
• PROCESS
• REPLICATION CLIENT
• REPLICATION SLAVE
• SUPER

In the below way, grants can be executed using the root account without error. 

mysql> grant file on *.* to tech_user;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01sec)

mysql>flush privileges;

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01sec)