// Tutorial //

How To Install MariaDB on Ubuntu 22.04

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Ubuntu 22.04

Introduction

MariaDB is an open-source relational database management system, commonly used as an alternative for MySQL as the database portion of the popular LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack. It is intended to be a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

The short version of this installation guide consists of these three steps:

• Update your package index using apt
• Install the mariadb-server package using apt. The package also pulls in related tools to interact with MariaDB
• Run the included mysql_secure_installation security script to restrict access to the server

This tutorial will explain how to install MariaDB on an Ubuntu 22.04 server and verify that it is running and has a safe initial configuration.

Prerequisites

• To follow this tutorial, you will need a server running Ubuntu 22.04. This server should have a non-root administrative user and a firewall configured with UFW. Set this up by following our initial server setup guide for Ubuntu 22.04.

Step 1 — Installing MariaDB

As of this writing, Ubuntu 22.04’s default APT repositories include MariaDB version 10.5.12.

To install it, update the package index on your server with apt:

Then install the package:

These commands will install MariaDB, but will not prompt you to set a password or make any other configuration changes. Because the default configuration leaves your installation of MariaDB insecure, you will use a script that the mariadb-server package provides to restrict access to the server and remove unused accounts.

Step 2 — Configuring MariaDB

For new MariaDB installations, the next step is to run the included security script. This script changes some of the less secure default options for things like remote root logins and sample users.

Run the security script:

This will take you through a series of prompts where you can make some changes to your MariaDB installation’s security options. The first prompt will ask you to enter the current database root password. Since you have not set one up yet, press ENTER to indicate “none”.

You’ll be asked if you want to switch to unix socket authentication. In previous versions of MariaDB, the root MariaDB user is set to authenticate using the unix_socket plugin by default rather than with a password. This allowed for some greater security and usability in many cases, but it also complicated things when you needed to allow administrative rights for external programs (e.g., phpMyAdmin).

Now you are given the option upfront, and since you already have a properly set up sudo user, type n and then press ENTER.

The next prompt asks you whether you’d like to set up a database root password. On Ubuntu, the root account for MariaDB is tied closely to automated system maintenance, so you should not change the configured authentication methods for that account.

Doing so would make it possible for a package update to break the database system by removing access to the administrative account. Type n and then press ENTER.

Later, you’ll go over how to set up an additional administrative account for password access if socket authentication is not appropriate for your use case.

From there, you can press Y and then ENTER to accept the defaults for all the subsequent questions. This will remove some anonymous users and the test database, disable remote root logins, and load these new rules so that MariaDB immediately implements the changes you have made.

With that, you’ve finished MariaDB’s initial security configuration. The next step is an optional one, though you should follow it if you prefer to authenticate to your MariaDB server with a password.

Step 3 — Testing MariaDB

When installed from the default repositories, MariaDB will start running automatically. To test this, check its status.

You’ll receive output that is similar to the following:

If MariaDB isn’t running, you can start it with the command sudo systemctl start mariadb.

For an additional check, you can try connecting to the database using the mysqladmin tool, which is a client that allows you to run administrative commands. For example, this command says to connect to MariaDB as root using the Unix socket and return the version:

You will receive output similar to this:

Conclusion

In this guide you installed the MariaDB relational database management system, and secured it using the mysql_secure_installation script that it came installed with. You also had the option to create a new administrative user that uses password authentication before testing the MariaDB server’s functionality.

Now that you have a running and secure MariaDB server, here some examples of next steps that you can take to work with the server: