Oninit
Talk to an expert →

Informix Error -298

-298 Cannot grant permission to public with grant option.

The clause WITH GRANT OPTION allows the receiver of the grant to grant the same privilege to others. In this case, the receiver of the grant is PUBLIC. If this statement were executed, everyone would have the privilege, and everyone could grant the privilege. This operation is prohibited. Either name specific grantees, or omit the clause WITH GRANT OPTION.

Oninit® Troubleshooting Guidance

Reasons / Common Causes

-298 is a security guardrail: GRANT ... TO PUBLIC WITH GRANT OPTION is rejected outright, because it would let literally every user redistribute the privilege to anyone else, defeating the point of controlling who can grant it.

  1. A GRANT statement targeting PUBLIC combined with WITH GRANT OPTION — the direct, only cause.
  2. Copy-pasted or templated GRANT statements that always include WITH GRANT OPTION out of habit, without considering that the target is PUBLIC this time.
  3. Misunderstanding what WITH GRANT OPTION is for — it's meant for delegating administration of a privilege to specific trusted users, not for blanket open access.
Solutions / Resolution
  1. Remove WITH GRANT OPTION when granting to PUBLIC, per the official guidance, if the intent is simply for everyone to have the privilege (without the ability to re-grant it).
  2. If the ability to re-grant is genuinely needed, grant to specific named users instead of PUBLIC, each with WITH GRANT OPTION individually.
Examples
The disallowed combination
GRANT SELECT ON customers TO PUBLIC WITH GRANT OPTION;
-- -298: PUBLIC cannot receive a re-grantable privilege

Fix — if everyone just needs the privilege, drop WITH GRANT OPTION:

GRANT SELECT ON customers TO PUBLIC;

Fix — if specific users need to be able to re-grant it, name them individually instead:

GRANT SELECT ON customers TO app_admin, report_admin WITH GRANT OPTION;
Diagnostic Checks
  1. Check whether the GRANT statement's target is PUBLIC and whether WITH GRANT OPTION is also present — the combination is what triggers this, not either clause alone.
Related Errors / Related Topics
  • -201 — "A syntax error has occurred." The general SQL-parsing-error family this fits into.

WITH GRANT OPTION and PUBLIC are mutually exclusive — pick named grantees if re-granting needs to be possible, or drop the grant option if PUBLIC access alone is the goal.