> but I don't understand how it solves this situation.

makes the mysql_install_db create the root user authenticated by unix_socket rather than leaving it to package scripts.

I'm not exactly sure what to do here. It's not an upstream (MariaDB) bug (yet). It needs to be fixed downstream (in Debian packaging). I don't know how downstream wants to fix the bug either. Not switching existing users to unix_socket seems obvious enough to me.

Daniel Black Thanks for the comment above but unfortunately I still don't understand how it works, what is the sequence of events, what does this mean for new install and upgrades, what things that change will rule out that will stop working etc. Can you please extend the context a bit?

We could also sit down an finalize this passwordless root login issue at the dev meetup next month if you wish to spend some time on it there.

scripts/mysql_system_tables_data.sql could be modified to add a root user account with a unix_socket auth.

The plugin would also need to be inserted here into the plugins table.

This would cover the install case as this is incorporated into the mysql_install_db script. some wrapping here will be needed to avoid installing this on Windows installs.

As upgrades don't invoke mysql_install_db the only thing required in mariadb-server-X.X.postinst is to populate user=root in debian.cnf instead of user = debian-sys-maint if its a socket user. The test_mysql_access bit of the postinit script is incorrect as this will return true if its a socket authed root user.

Happy to spend some time on it at the dev conference. Its going to be pretty busy I suspect.