CSV data to two MYSQL tables using Python

You can reduce the number of calls to cursor.execute by preparing the arguments in advance (in the loop), and calling cursor.executemany after the loop has completed:

cursor = conn.cursor()   
user_args = []
perm_args = []

perms = '(read)(write)(view)(delete)(resume)(share)(slideshow)(rename)(makedir)(deletedir)'

with open(sys.argv[1], 'rt') as f:
    for id, row in enumerate(csv.reader(f), start = 24):
        username, password, path = row
        user_args.append((id, username, password, 'MainUsers'))
        perm_args.append((id, path, perms))

insert_users = '''
    INSERT IGNORE INTO `USERS`
    (`userid`, `username`, `password`, `server_group`)
    VALUES (%s, %s, %s, %s)
    '''

insert_vfs_permissions = '''
    INSERT IGNORE INTO `VFS_PERMISSIONS`
    (`userid`, `path`, `privs`)
    VALUES (%s, %s, %s)
    '''

cursor.executemany(insert_users,user_args)
cursor.executemany(insert_vfs_permissions,perm_args)

INSERT IGNORE tells MySQL to try to insert rows into the MySQL table, but ignore the command if there is a conflict. For example, if userid is the PRIMARY KEY, and there is already a row with the same userid, then the INSERT IGNORE SQL will ignore the command to insert a new row since that would create two rows with the same PRIMARY KEY.

Without the IGNORE, the cursor.executemany command would raise an exception and fail to insert any rows.

I used INSERT IGNORE so you can run the code more than once without cursor.executemany raising an exception.

There is also a INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE command which tells MySQL to try to insert a row, but update it if there is a conflict, but I'll leave it at this unless you want to know more about ON DUPLICATE KEY.