MariaDB-Help.md

🐬 MariaDB Help and Troubleshooting

This is content refers to:

Mariadb:11.4.7
Docker image: mariadb@sha256:1d18f91deb21136d1881705720071d1b474a9904ecca827058bf1c0fc64d3118

Under Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS.

Table of Contents

• 1. How-To: Install MariaDB
• 2. How-To: Setup custom data directory
• 3. How-To: Define default character set and collation
• 4. How-To: Change MariaDB Port
• Misc: Useful commands

1. How-To: Install MariaDB

...

---

2. How-To: Setup custom data directory

Why? An easy accessible, absolute path custom directory can be used for persistency between containers with a docker volume.

2.1. Create dir

sudo mkdir mariadb-data

2.2. Give permissions and ownership for mysql user

sudo chown -R 999:999 /mariadb-data
sudo chmod 700 /mariadb-data

2.3. Edit MariaDB config

Stop MariaDB:
sudo systemctl stop mariadb

Then open config:
sudo nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.cnf

Add or edit in:
[mysqld]
datadir = /mariadb-data

Save the file and exit.

2.4. Copy existing databases to the new dir

Copy respective files with permissions:
sudo cp -a /var/lib/mysql/. /mariadb-data/

2.5. Restart MariaDB

sudo systemctl start mariadb

2.6. Check if the new dir works

Log into MariaDB:
mysql -u root -p
or
'/usr/bin/mariadb -u root -p'

Check databases:
SHOW DATABASES;

---

3. How-To: Define default character set and collation

UTF-8 ensures consistent sorting and comparison behaviour for strings.

Edit Config:
sudo nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.cnf

Add:
[mysqld]
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
init-connect='SET NAMES utf8mb4'

Restart MariaDB afterwards.
sudo systemctl restart mariadb

---

4. How-To: Change MariaDB Port

4.1. Open Config File

sudo nano /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf

4.2. Look for [mysql] section or add it on top of the file

MariaDB standart port is 3306. Choose something else.

[mysqld]
port = 7307

4.3. Restart MariaDB Service

sudo systemctl restart mariadb

4.4. Verify the new port is working

sudo ss -tulnp | grep mysql

---

Misc: Useful commands

Start MariaDB

sudo systemctl start mariadb

Stop MariaDB

sudo systemctl stop mariadb

Restart MariaDB

sudo systemctl restart mariadb