Question: I am getting this error when executing a `GRANT` statement on my Aurora DB instance in AWS:

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> The MySQL server is running with the --read-only option so it cannot execute this statement
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My user is not read-only though, so why is this happening?

Answer: 
It turned out to be a silly mistake, but posting it anyway in case anyone else has the problem:

I was accessing the replica instance by mistake - I had copied the endpoint for the replica, and it is read-only apparently. So if you have this problem, verify that you are connecting to the Primary Instance or best of all the DB Cluster endpoint.

**Edit:** According to @Justin's answer we definitely should use DB Cluster:

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> You need to connect to the cluster, rather than an instance. This is because instances seem to take a turn to be the readers and writers.
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You need to connect to the **cluster**, rather than an **instance**. This is because instances seem to take a turn to be the readers and writers.