NOTE: MariaDB is installed without root password, it is recommended to set the root password with the following command as soon as possible: mysqladmin password The initscript used to start mysql has been reverted to use the one shipped by MariaDB. This means the following changes: * The generation of the initial system mysql database is now done when mysql is started from the initscript and only if the /var/lib/mysql/mysql directory is empty (mysql_install_db). Previousely this was quite hidden and silently done at (rpm) install time. As a consequence to this change you may have to perform some manual tasks to upgrade the mysql system database and such. So, doing something like this might help you: systemctl stop mysqld.service TMPDIR=/var/tmp mysql_install_db mysql_upgrade --skip-write-binlog The cluster functionalities (ndb) has been deactivated and will be removed in future mysql versions. Oracle has a new product named mysql-cluster that replaces the cluster functionalities. The mysql-common-core package ships with a default /etc/my.cnf file that is based on the my-medium.cnf file that comes with the source code.