I am trying to connect to a remote MySQL server 5.7 installed on Ubuntu 16.04 from my workstation.

Here is the error i am getting (Using Navicat to connect).

https://i.stack.imgur.com/oclnV.png

To make it work I followed the following steps.

1) GRANT ALL ON databasename.* TO user@xx.xxx.xx.xx IDENTIFIED BY 'yourpassword';

2) flush privileges;

3) sudo /etc/init.d/mysql restart

Some forums recommends commenting line starts with "bind-address" on my.cnf which resides in /etc/mysql/my.cnf. The problem is there is no such line on my installation.

# The MySQL database server configuration file.
#
# You can copy this to one of:
# - "/etc/mysql/my.cnf" to set global options,
# - "~/.my.cnf" to set user-specific options.
#
# One can use all long options that the program supports.
# Run program with --help to get a list of available options and with
# --print-defaults to see which it would actually understand and use.
#
# For explanations see
# http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/server-system-variables.html

#
# * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file!
#   The files must end with '.cnf', otherwise they'll be ignored.
#
!includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/
!includedir /etc/mysql/mysql.conf.d/

I also tried to open ports on firewall using the following commands.

sudo ufw allow 3306/tcp
sudo service ufw restart

But still stuck with the same problem.