Differences in MariaDB in Debian (and Ubuntu)

The .deb packages provided by MariaDB Foundation's and MariaDB Corporation's repositories are not identical to the official .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories.

The packages provided by MariaDB Foundation's and MariaDB Corporation's repositories are generated using the Debian packaging in MariaDB's official source code. The Debian packaging scripts are specifically in the debian/ directory.

The packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories are generated using the Debian packaging in Debian's mirror of MariaDB's source code, which contains some custom changes. The source tree can be found here:

https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/pkg-mysql/mariadb-10.1.git/tree/debian

As a consequence, MariaDB behaves a bit differently if it is installed from Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories.

Option File Locations

The option file located at /etc/mysql/my.cnf is handled by the update-alternatives mechanism when the mysql-common package is installed. It is a symbolic link that references either mysql.cnf or mariadb.cnf depending on whether MySQL or MariaDB is installed. Most of the MariaDB option files are therefore actually located in /etc/mysql/mariadb.d/.

System Variables

Variable	MariaDB in Debian	Standard MariaDB	Notes
character_set_server	utf8mb4	latin1	Debian sets a default character set that can support emojis etc.
collation_server	utf8mb4_general_ci	latin1_swedish_ci

Options

Option	MariaDB in Debian	Standard MariaDB	Notes
`plugin-load-add`	`auth_socket.so`	-	Before MariaDB 10.4.3, MariaDB did not enable the `unix_socket` authentication plugin by default.This is default in Debian, allowing passwordless login.

TLS

MariaDB binaries from .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories are linked with a different TLS library than MariaDB binaries from .deb packages provided by MariaDB Foundation's and MariaDB Corporation's repositories.

MariaDB Server binaries:
- In MariaDB 10.4.6 and later, MariaDB Server is statically linked with the bundled wolfSSL libraries in .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories.
- In MariaDB 10.4.5 and before, MariaDB Server is statically linked with the bundled yaSSL libraries in .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories.
- In contrast, MariaDB Server is dynamically linked with the system's OpenSSL libraries in .deb packages provided by MariaDB Foundation and MariaDB Corporation.

MariaDB client and utility binaries:
- In MariaDB 10.4.6 and later, MariaDB's clients and utilities and MariaDB Connector/C are dynamically linked with the system's GnuTLS libraries in .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories. libmysqlclient is still statically linked with the bundled wolfSSL libraries.
- In MariaDB 10.2 and later, MariaDB's clients and utilities and MariaDB Connector/C are dynamically linked with the system's GnuTLS libraries in .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories. libmysqlclient is still statically linked with the bundled yaSSL libraries.
- In MariaDB 10.1 and earlier, MariaDB's clients and utilities and libmysqlclient are statically linked with the bundled yaSSL libraries in .deb packages provided by Debian's and Ubuntu's default repositories.
- In contrast, MariaDB's clients and utilities, libmysqlclient, and MariaDB Connector/C are dynamically linked with the system's OpenSSL libraries in .deb packages provided by MariaDB Foundation's and MariaDB Corporation's repositories.

See TLS and Cryptography Libraries Used by MariaDB for more information about which libraries are used on which platforms.

Authentication

The unix_socket authentication plugin is installed by default in new installations that use the .deb packages provided by Debian's default repositories in Debian 9 and later and Ubuntu's default repositories in Ubuntu 15.10 and later.

The root@localhost created by mysql_install_db will also be created to authenticate via the unix_socket authentication plugin in these builds.

More Information

For details, check out the Debian and Ubuntu official repositories:

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https://mariadb.com/kb/en/differences-in-mariadb-in-debian/