mysql (Linux) privileges

[Tony Chamberlain]

We are using 5.0.19 mysql on CentOS 4.5. I have a couple questions:

1) Someone told us to use SKIP-NAME-RESOLVE in my.cnf. After using it, none of
the privileges seemed to work (or only a limited number). I guess you can't
use host names beginning with digits or it would confuse them with IP addresses.
The mysql.user (user and host) are "root", "%", but that does not work with
SKIP-NAME-RESOLVE. Anyway to do IP and host wildcard?

2) when recreating a database from a mysql dump on another machine, suddenlt,
tomcat got mysql errors (This is WITHOUT the SKIP-NAME-RESOLVE). The error
in the logfile was something like access denied to
"[e-mail]".
There were at least two entries in mysql.user for root

"root", "%" and
"root", "localhost"
both had all privileges

i.e. grant all privileges on *.* to 'root'@'%'

(Relax, it is on an internal private network), but I still got that access
error. Adding

grant all privileges on *.* to 'root'@'localhost.localdomain'

fixed the problem, but if I use "%" I shouldn't have to specify any other
addresses, should I? Do multiple entries override each other? Or what is
the problem?