Alpine Linux has dummy counterparts packages for those that are not close to that change from mysql to mariadb naming packages, please check the MariaDB wiki page for more information.

Take in consideration that the user mysql was created during instalation of packages, in the initialization section two users will be created in database init: root and mysql, and in that point only if are in their respective system accounts, will be able to connect to the database service.

apk add mysql mysql-client

That will install the most used ones.. mariadb-cient and mariadb-server, rest of packages are brief described here for more information, here are listed in orden of relevance for production server

The alpine package of MySQL/MariaDB are like normal tarball of MySQL one, admins must be know what they want.. there's no automatic window-like here.

The datadir are located to /var/lib/mysql must be owned by the mysql user and group. You can modify this behavior but must edit the service file at /etc/init.d directory. Also, you need to set datadir=<YOUR_DATADIR> under section [mysqld] at the config file.

1. Initialize the main mysql database, and the data dir as standardized to /var/lib/mysql by the rc script
2. Then initialize the service, root account and socket connection are enabled without password at this point
3. Setup the root account by asignes a proper password, this are purely paranoid. due next step already do that!
4. Setup and init the installation by running the mysql_secure_installation
5. Setup permissions for manage others users and databases

mysql_install_db --user=mysql --datadir=/var/lib/mysql

rc-service mariadb start

mysqladmin -u root password toor

After that, all are initializated to proceed with configuration, now can be done using the mysql_secure_installation script at the next section:

In order to finish setup into MariaDB now provide this script called mysql_secure_instalation that also are present as mariadb-secure-installation, too. This script provides minimal and security setup to the database, and here are the questions made explained:

1. Enter current password for root (enter for none): this are if you previously setup as we done in previous section a root password, just provide it and press enter, must be provided due we already set previously and from now, this sript will access to the engine and alter many setting on the database. Correct respond are OK, successfully used password, moving on...
2. Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] Setting the root password or using the unix_socket ensures that only admins can log into engine database. Since mysql 5.6 and mariadb 10.2 a new auth mechanish are set, by socket authentiaction, when system user are same as mysql/mariadb user, in this case, no password are need. In production servers this are not the case and must be disabled, so answer NO, and response will be ... skipping.
3. Change the root password? [Y/n] this answer are here only if the first one are just enter, or if can provide a better passowrd if no unix socket are set. Just press "n" only if you provided a good password, otherwise just
4. Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] this permits remove the anonymous user created to log using socket authentication, only working on unix-like system. In any case, production system must remove it, so answer Y and proper respond must be ... Success!.
5. Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from 'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at the root password from the network. For sure answer Y and proper respond must be ... Success!.
6. Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] By default, MariaDB comes with a database named 'test' that anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing, and should be removed, so answer Y and proper respond must be ... Success!.
7. Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes made so far will take effect immediately, so answer Y and proper respond must be ... Success!.

After reponse all the questions.. restart the service with rc-service mariadb restart

sed -i "s|.*max_allowed_packet\s*=.*|max_allowed_packet = 100M|g" /etc/mysql/my.cnf
sed -i "s|.*max_allowed_packet\s*=.*|max_allowed_packet = 100M|g" /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf

sed -i "s|.*bind-address\s*=.*|bind-address=127.0.0.1|g" /etc/mysql/my.cnf
sed -i "s|.*bind-address\s*=.*|bind-address=127.0.0.1|g" /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf

sed -i "s|.*skip-networking.*|skip-networking|g" /etc/mysql/my.cnf
sed -i "s|.*skip-networking.*|skip-networking|g" /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server.cnf

cat > /etc/my.cnf.d/mariadb-server-default-charset.cnf << EOF
[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

[mysqld]
collation_server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci
character_set_server = utf8mb4

[mysql]
default-character-set = utf8mb4
EOF

Mayor Upgrades beetween Alpine linux version are so easy as change the repository version, but the MySQL/MariaDB engine need some extra steps when this are performed:

Upgrade databases on major releases Upon a major version release of mariadb (for example mariadb-10.1.10-1 to mariadb-10.1.18-1), it is wise to upgrade databases:

1. keep the old database (mysql sheme) structure of the engine daemon, currently this are not more the case, today this not make sense anymore
2. upgrade the MariaDB/MySQL packages, of course with must be done if the upgrade process to mayor alpine version does not!
3. run the mysql_upgrade -u root -p script, providing the password or root, (from the new package version) against the old still-running database (mysql sheme). This will produce some error messages; however, the upgrade will succeed.
4. Restart the service

If are unable to run mysql_upgrade because MySQL cannot start try run MySQL in safemode with mysqld_safe --datadir=/var/lib/mysql/ command and then run the mysql_upgrade -u root -p script.

Btrfs Notes

If the database (in /var/lib/mysql) resides on a btrfs file system, you should consider disabling Copy-on-Write for the directory before creating any database (schemes), after initialization you can enabled again. But .. on every database creation (scheme creation), you must disabled again, to avoid corrupted data.

ZFS Bock sizes

ZFS, unlike most other file systems, has a variable record size, or what is commonly referred to as a block size. By default, the recordsize on ZFS is 128KiB, which means it will dynamically allocate blocks of any size from 512B to 128KiB depending on the size of file being written. Most RDBMSes work in 8KiB-sized blocks by default. Although the block size is tunable for MySQL/MariaDB use an 8KiB block size by default.

It is usually desirable to tune ZFS instead to accommodate the databases, using a command such as zfs set recordsize=8K /var/lib/mysql (or change /var/lib/mysql to the mount point where /var/lib/mysql resides) and in the interest of saving memory, it is best to simply disable ZFS's caching of the database's file data and let the database do its own job with zfs set primarycache=metadata /var/lib/mysql (or change /var/lib/mysql to the mount point where /var/lib/mysql resides).

But beware, these kinds of tuning parameters are only if RDBMSes are setup in dedicated partitions, if your root and of course database are all in one partition, dont do that. Separate ones.

rc-service mysql stop

kill  `cat /run/mysqld/mysqld.pid`

/usr/bin/mysqld --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pid-file=/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid --skip-grant-tables --skip-networking &

mysql -e "ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass';FLUSH PRIVILEGES;ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'MyNewPass';FLUSH PRIVILEGES;set password = password('MyNewPass');"

kill  `cat /run/mysqld/mysqld.pid`

rc-service mariadb restart