docs/mariadb

Quick reference

• Maintained by:
  MariaDB developer community

• Where to get help:
  Database Adminstrators (Stack Exchange), MariaDB Knowledge Base (Ask a Question here available).

Also see the "Getting Help with MariaDB" article on the MariaDB Knowledge Base.

Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

• 10.7.1-focal, 10.7-focal, 10.7.1, 10.7
• 10.6.5-focal, 10.6-focal, 10-focal, focal, 10.6.5, 10.6, 10, latest
• 10.5.13-focal, 10.5-focal, 10.5.13, 10.5
• 10.4.22-focal, 10.4-focal, 10.4.22, 10.4
• 10.3.32-focal, 10.3-focal, 10.3.32, 10.3
• 10.2.41-bionic, 10.2-bionic, 10.2.41, 10.2

Quick reference (cont.)

• Where to file issues:
  Issues can be filed on https://jira.mariadb.org/ under the "MDEV" Project and "Docker" Component, or on GitHub

• Supported architectures: (more info)
  amd64, arm64v8, ppc64le, s390x

• Published image artifact details:
  repo-info repo's repos/mariadb/ directory (history)
  (image metadata, transfer size, etc)

• Image updates:
  official-images repo's library/mariadb label
  official-images repo's library/mariadb file (history)

• Source of this description:
  docs repo's mariadb/ directory (history)

What is MariaDB?

MariaDB Server is one of the most popular database servers in the world. It’s made by the original developers of MySQL and guaranteed to stay open source. Notable users include Wikipedia, DBS Bank, and ServiceNow.

The intent is also to maintain high compatibility with MySQL, ensuring a library binary equivalency and exact matching with MySQL APIs and commands. MariaDB developers continue to develop new features and improve performance to better serve its users.

How to use this image

Start a mariadb server instance

Starting a MariaDB instance with the latest version is simple:

$ docker run --detach --name some-mariadb --env MARIADB_USER=example-user --env MARIADB_PASSWORD=my_cool_secret --env MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw  mariadb:latest

or:

$ docker network create some-network 
$ docker run --detach --network some-network --name some-mariadb --env MARIADB_USER=example-user --env MARIADB_PASSWORD=my_cool_secret --env MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw  mariadb:latest

... where some-network is a newly created network (other than bridge as the default network), some-mariadb is the name you want to assign to your container, my-secret-pw is the password to be set for the MariaDB root user. See the list above for relevant tags to match your needs and environment.

Connect to MariaDB from the MySQL/MariaDB command line client

The following command starts another mariadb container instance and runs the mysql command line client against your original mariadb container, allowing you to execute SQL statements against your database instance:

$ docker run -it --network some-network --rm mariadb mysql -hsome-mariadb -uexample-user -p

... where some-mariadb is the name of your original mariadb container (connected to the some-network Docker network).

This image can also be used as a client for non-Docker or remote instances:

$ docker run -it --rm mariadb mysql -h <server container IP> -u example-user -p

That will give you a standard MariaDB prompt. You can test it with:

MariaDB [(none)]> SELECT VERSION();

... which should give you the version. You can then use exit to leave the MariaDB command line client and the client container.

More information about the MariaDB command-line client can be found in the MariaDB Knowledge Base

... via docker stack deploy or docker-compose

Example stack.yml for mariadb:

# Use root/example as user/password credentials
version: '3.1'

services:

  db:
    image: mariadb
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example

  adminer:
    image: adminer
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:8080

Run docker stack deploy -c stack.yml mariadb (or docker-compose -f stack.yml up), wait for it to initialize completely, and visit http://swarm-ip:8080, http://localhost:8080, or http://host-ip:8080 (as appropriate).

Container shell access and viewing MariaDB logs

The docker exec command allows you to run commands inside a Docker container. The following command line will give you a bash shell inside your mariadb container:

$ docker exec -it some-mariadb bash

The log is available through Docker's container log:

$ docker logs some-mariadb

Using a custom MariaDB configuration file

The startup configuration is specified in the file /etc/mysql/my.cnf, and that file in turn includes any files found in the /etc/mysql/conf.d directory that end with .cnf. Settings in files in this directory will augment and/or override settings in /etc/mysql/my.cnf. If you want to use a customized MariaDB configuration, you can create your alternative configuration file in a directory on the host machine and then mount that directory location as /etc/mysql/conf.d inside the mariadb container.

If /my/custom/config-file.cnf is the path and name of your custom configuration file, you can start your mariadb container like this (note that only the directory path of the custom config file is used in this command):

$ docker run --name some-mariadb -v /my/custom:/etc/mysql/conf.d -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mariadb:latest

This will start a new container some-mariadb where the MariaDB instance uses the combined startup settings from /etc/mysql/my.cnf and /etc/mysql/conf.d/config-file.cnf, with settings from the latter taking precedence.

Configuration without a cnf file

Many configuration options can be passed as flags to mysqld. This will give you the flexibility to customize the container without needing a cnf file. For example, if you want to run on port 3808 just run the following:

$ docker run --name some-mariadb -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mariadb:latest --port 3808

If you would like to see a complete list of available options, just run:

$ docker run -it --rm mariadb:latest --verbose --help

Environment Variables

When you start the mariadb image, you can adjust the initialization of the MariaDB instance by passing one or more environment variables on the docker run command line. Do note that none of the variables below will have any effect if you start the container with a data directory that already contains a database: any pre-existing database will always be left untouched on container startup.

From tag 10.2.38, 10.3.29, 10.4.19, 10.5.10 onwards, and all 10.6 tags, the MARIADB_* equivalent variables are provided. MARIADB_* variants will always be used in preference to MYSQL_* variants.

One of MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD, MARIADB_ALLOW_EMPTY_ROOT_PASSWORD, or MARIADB_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD (or equivalents, including *_FILE), is required. The other environment variables are optional.

MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD / MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD

This specifies the password that will be set for the MariaDB root superuser account. In the above example, it was set to my-secret-pw.

MARIADB_ALLOW_EMPTY_ROOT_PASSWORD / MYSQL_ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD

Set to a non-empty value, like yes, to allow the container to be started with a blank password for the root user. NOTE: Setting this variable to yes is not recommended unless you really know what you are doing, since this will leave your MariaDB instance completely unprotected, allowing anyone to gain complete superuser access.

MARIADB_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD / MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD

Set to a non-empty value, like yes, to generate a random initial password for the root user. The generated root password will be printed to stdout (GENERATED ROOT PASSWORD: .....).

MARIADB_ROOT_HOST / MYSQL_ROOT_HOST

This is the hostname part of the root user created. By default this is %, however it can be set to any default MariaDB allowed hostname component.

MARIADB_DATABASE / MYSQL_DATABASE

This variable allows you to specify the name of a database to be created on image startup.

MARIADB_USER / MYSQL_USER, MARIADB_PASSWORD / MYSQL_PASSWORD

These are used in conjunction to create a new user and to set that user's password. Both user and password variables are required for a user to be created. This user will be granted all access (corresponding to GRANT ALL) to the MARIADB_DATABASE database.

Do note that there is no need to use this mechanism to create the root superuser, that user gets created by default with the password specified by the MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD / MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD variable.

MARIADB_INITDB_SKIP_TZINFO / MYSQL_INITDB_SKIP_TZINFO

By default, the entrypoint script automatically loads the timezone data needed for the CONVERT_TZ() function. If it is not needed, any non-empty value disables timezone loading.

Docker Secrets

As an alternative to passing sensitive information via environment variables, _FILE may be appended to the previously listed environment variables, causing the initialization script to load the values for those variables from files present in the container. In particular, this can be used to load passwords from Docker secrets stored in /run/secrets/<secret_name> files. For example:

$ docker run --name some-mysql -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql-root -d mariadb:latest

Currently, this is only supported for MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD, MARIADB_ROOT_HOST, MARIADB_DATABASE, MARIADB_USER, and MARIADB_PASSWORD (and MYSQL_* equivalents of these).

Initializing a fresh instance

When a container is started for the first time, a new database with the specified name will be created and initialized with the provided configuration variables. Furthermore, it will execute files with extensions .sh, .sql, .sql.gz, .sql.xz and .sql.zst that are found in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d. Files will be executed in alphabetical order. .sh files without file execute permission are sourced rather than executed. You can easily populate your mariadb services by mounting a SQL dump into that directory and provide custom images with contributed data. SQL files will be imported by default to the database specified by the MARIADB_DATABASE / MYSQL_DATABASE variable.

Caveats

Where to Store Data

Important note: There are several ways to store data used by applications that run in Docker containers. We encourage users of the mariadb images to familiarize themselves with the options available, including:

• Let Docker manage the storage of your database data by writing the database files to disk on the host system using its own internal volume management. This is the default and is easy and fairly transparent to the user. The downside is that the files may be hard to locate for tools and applications that run directly on the host system, i.e. outside containers.
• Create a data directory on the host system (outside the container) and mount this to a directory visible from inside the container. This places the database files in a known location on the host system, and makes it easy for tools and applications on the host system to access the files. The downside is that the user needs to make sure that the directory exists, and that e.g. directory permissions and other security mechanisms on the host system are set up correctly.

The Docker documentation is a good starting point for understanding the different storage options and variations, and there are multiple blogs and forum postings that discuss and give advice in this area. We will simply show the basic procedure here for the latter option above:

1. Create a data directory on a suitable volume on your host system, e.g. /my/own/datadir.

2. Start your mariadb container like this:

   $ docker run --name some-mariadb -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mariadb:latest
   

The -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql part of the command mounts the /my/own/datadir directory from the underlying host system as /var/lib/mysql inside the container, where MariaDB by default will write its data files.

No connections until MariaDB init completes

If there is no database initialized when the container starts, then a default database will be created. While this is the expected behavior, this means that it will not accept incoming connections until such initialization completes. This may cause issues when using automation tools, such as docker-compose, which start several containers simultaneously.

Usage against an existing database

If you start your mariadb container instance with a data directory that already contains a database (specifically, a mysql subdirectory), the $MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD variable should be omitted from the run command line; it will in any case be ignored, and the pre-existing database will not be changed in any way.

Creating database dumps

Most of the normal tools will work, although their usage might be a little convoluted in some cases to ensure they have access to the mysqld server. A simple way to ensure this is to use docker exec and run the tool from the same container, similar to the following:

$ docker exec some-mariadb sh -c 'exec mysqldump --all-databases -uroot -p"$MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD"' > /some/path/on/your/host/all-databases.sql

Restoring data from dump files

For restoring data. You can use the docker exec command with the -i flag, similar to the following:

$ docker exec -i some-mariadb sh -c 'exec mysql -uroot -p"$MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD"' < /some/path/on/your/host/all-databases.sql

Creating backups with Mariabackup

To perform a backup using Mariabackup, an additional volume for the backup needs to be included when the container is started like this:

$ docker run --name some-mariadb -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql -v /my/own/backupdir:/backup -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mariadb:latest

Mariabackup will run as the mysql user in the container, so the permissions on /backup will need to ensure that it can be written to by this user:

$ docker exec some-mariadb chown mysql: /backup

To perform the backup:

$ docker exec --user mysql some-mariadb mariabackup --backup --target-dir=/backup --user=root --password=my-secret-pw

If you wish to take a copy of the /backup you can do so without stopping the container or getting an inconsistent backup.

$ docker exec --user mysql some-mariadb tar --create --xz --file - /backup > backup.tar.xz

Restore backups with Mariabackup

These steps restore the backup made with Mariabackup.

At some point before doing the restore, the backup needs to be prepared. Here /my/own/backupdir contains a previous backup. Perform the prepare like this:

$ docker run --user mysql --rm -v /my/own/backupdir:/backup mariadb:latest mariabackup --prepare --target-dir=/backup

Now that the image is prepared, start the container with both the data and the backup volumes and restore the backup:

$ docker run --user mysql --rm -v /my/own/newdatadir:/var/lib/mysql -v /my/own/backupdir:/backup mariadb:latest mariabackup --copy-back --target-dir=/backup

With /my/own/newdatadir containing the restored backup, start normally as this is an initialized data directory:

$ docker run --name some-mariadb -v /my/own/newdatadir:/var/lib/mysql -d mariadb:latest

For further information on Mariabackup, see the Mariabackup Knowledge Base.

How to reset root and user passwords

If you have an existing data directory and wish to reset the root and user passwords, and to create a database on which the user can fully modify, perform the following steps.

First create a passwordreset.sql file:

CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS root@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'thisismyrootpassword';
SET PASSWORD FOR root@localhost = PASSWORD('thisismyrootpassword');
GRANT ALL ON *.* TO root@localhost WITH GRANT OPTION;
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS root@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'thisismyrootpassword';
SET PASSWORD FOR root@'%' = PASSWORD('thisismyrootpassword');
GRANT ALL ON *.* TO root@'%' WITH GRANT OPTION;
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS myuser@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'thisismyuserpassword';
SET PASSWORD FOR myuser@'%' = PASSWORD('thisismyuserpassword');
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS databasename;
GRANT ALL ON databasename.* TO myuser@'%';

Adjust myuser, databasename and passwords as needed.

Then:

$ docker run --rm -v /my/own/datadir:/var/lib/mysql -v /my/own/passwordreset.sql:/passwordreset.sql:z mariadb:latest --init-file=/passwordreset.sql

On restarting the MariaDB container on this /my/own/datadir, the root and myuser passwords will be reset.

How to install MariaDB plugins

MariaDB has many plugins, most are not enabled by default, some are in the mariadb container, others need to be installed from additional packages.

The following methods summarize the MariaDB Blog article - Installing plugins in the MariaDB Docker Library Container on this topic.

Which plugins does the container contain?

To see which plugins are available in the mariadb:

$ docker run --rm mariadb:latest ls -C /usr/lib/mysql/plugin

Enabling a plugin using flags

Using the --plugin-load-add flag with the plugin name (can be repeated), the plugins will be loaded and ready when the container is started:

For example enable the simple\_password\_check plugin:

$ docker run --name some-mariadb -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw --network=host -d mariadb:latest --plugin-load-add=simple_password_check

Enabling a plugin in the configuration files

plugin-load-add can be used as a configuration option to load plugins. The example below load the FederatedX Storage Engine.

$ printf "[mariadb]\nplugin-load-add=ha_federatedx\n" > /my/custom/federatedx.conf
$ docker run --name some-mariadb -v /my/custom:/etc/mysql/conf.d -e MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=my-secret-pw -d mariadb:latest

Install a plugin using SQL in /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d

INSTALL SONAME can be used to install a plugin as part of the database initialization.

Create the SQL file used in initialization:

$ echo 'INSTALL SONAME "disks";' > my_initdb/disks.sql

In this case the my\_initdb is a /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d directory per "Initializing a fresh instance" section above.

Identifing additional plugins in additional packages

A number of plugins are in separate packages to reduce their installation size. The package names of MariaDB created plugins can be determined using the following command:

$ docker run --rm mariadb:latest sh -c 'apt-get update -qq && apt-cache search mariadb-plugin'

Creating a image with plugins from additional packages

A new image needs to be created when using additional packages. The mariadb image can be used as a base however:

In the following the CONNECT Storage Engine is installed:

FROM mariadb:latest
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get install mariadb-plugin-connect -y && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Installing plugins from packages creates a configuration file in the directory /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/ that loads the plugin on startup.

License

View license information for the software contained in this image.

As with all Docker images, these likely also contain other software which may be under other licenses (such as Bash, etc from the base distribution, along with any direct or indirect dependencies of the primary software being contained).

Some additional license information which was able to be auto-detected might be found in the repo-info repository's mariadb/ directory.

As for any pre-built image usage, it is the image user's responsibility to ensure that any use of this image complies with any relevant licenses for all software contained within.