The best that I can tell is that this code traces back to David Schmitt. It has been forked many times since then :)

  1. you cannot add databases to an instance that has a root password

  2. you have to specify username as BLAH at USER or it cannot be found

  3. mysql_grant does not complain if user does not exist

  4. Needs support for pre-seeding on debian

  5. the types may need to take user/password

  6. rather or not to configure /etc/.my.cnf should be configurable