MariaDB is a free and open source fork of well known MySQL database management server software, developed by the brains behind MySQL, it’s envisioned to remain free/open source.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install MariaDB 10.1 stable version in the most widely used versions of RHEL/CentOS and Fedora distributions.

For your information, Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS 7.0 switched from supporting MySQL to MariaDB as the default database management system.

Note that in this tutorial, we’ll assume your working on the server as root, otherwise, use the sudo command to run all the commands.

Step 1: Add MariaDB Yum Repository

1. Start by adding the MariaDB YUM repository file MariaDB.repo for RHEL/CentOS and Fedora systems.

# vi /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

Now add the following lines to your respective Linux distribution version as shown.

On CentOS 7

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.1/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

On RHEL 7

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.1/rhel7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

Add MariaDB Yum Repo

Step 2: Install MariaDB in CentOS 7

2. Once MariaDB repository has been added, you can easily install it with just one single command.

# yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client -y

Install MariaDB in CentOS 7

3. As soon as the installation of MariaDB packages completes, start the database server daemon for the time being, and also enable it to start automatically at the next boot like so:

# systemctl start mariadb
# systemctl enable mariadb
# systemctl status mariadb

Start MariaDB Service in CentOS 7

Step 3: Secure MariaDB in CentOS 7

4. Now its time to secure your MariaDB by setting root password, disabling remote root login, removing the test database as well as anonymous users and finally reload privileges:

# mysql_secure_installation

Secure MySQL in CentOS 7

5. After securing the database server, you may want to check certain MariaDB features such as: installed version, default program argument list, and also login to the MariaDB command shell as follows:

# mysql -V
# mysqld --print-defaults
# mysql -u root -p

Verify MySQL Version