bitnami/mariadb repository overview

⁠Bitnami Secure Image for MariaDB

Overview of MariaDB⁠ Trademarks: This software listing is packaged by Bitnami. The respective trademarks mentioned in the offering are owned by the respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation or endorsement.

⁠ TL;DR

docker run --name mariadb -e ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/mariadb:latest

Warning: These quick setups are only intended for development environments. You are encouraged to change the insecure default credentials and check out the available configuration options in the Configuration⁠ section for a more secure deployment.

⁠ Choosing between the Standard and Minimal image

This asset is available in two flavors: Standard and Minimal; designed to address different use cases and operational needs.

⁠ Standard images

The standard images are full-featured, production-ready containers built on top of secure base operating systems. They include:

• The complete runtime and commonly used system tools.
• A familiar Linux environment (shell, package manager, debugging utilities).
• Full compatibility with most CI/CD pipelines and existing workloads.

Recommended for:

• Development and testing environments.
• Workloads requiring package installation or debugging tools.
• Applications that depend on system utilities or shared libraries.

⁠ Minimal images

The minimal images are optimized, distroless-style containers derived from a stripped-down base. They only ship what’s strictly necessary to run the application; no shell, package manager, or extra libraries. They provide:

• Smaller size: Faster pull and startup times.
• Reduced attack surface: Fewer components and potential vulnerabilities.
• Simpler maintenance: Fewer dependencies to patch or update.

Recommended for:

• Production environments prioritizing performance and security.
• Regulated or security-sensitive workloads
• Containers built via multi-stage builds (e.g., Golang static binaries).

⁠ How to deploy MariaDB in Kubernetes?

Deploying Bitnami applications as Helm Charts is the easiest way to get started with our applications on Kubernetes. Read more about the installation in the Bitnami MariaDB Chart GitHub repository⁠.

⁠ Why use a non-root container?

Non-root container images add an extra layer of security and are generally recommended for production environments. However, because they run as a non-root user, privileged tasks are typically off-limits. Learn more about non-root containers in our docs⁠.

⁠ Supported tags and respective Dockerfile links

Learn more about the Bitnami tagging policy and the difference between rolling tags and immutable tags in our documentation page⁠.

⁠ Get this image

The recommended way to get the Bitnami MariaDB Docker Image is to pull the prebuilt image from the Docker Hub Registry⁠.

docker pull REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/mariadb:latest

To use a specific version, you can pull a versioned tag. You can view the list of available versions⁠ in the Docker Hub Registry.

docker pull REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/mariadb:[TAG]

If you wish, you can also build the image yourself by cloning the repository, changing to the directory containing the Dockerfile and executing the docker build command. Remember to replace the APP, VERSION and OPERATING-SYSTEM path placeholders in the example command below with the correct values.

git clone https://github.com/bitnami/containers.git
cd bitnami/APP/VERSION/OPERATING-SYSTEM
docker build -t REGISTRY_NAME/bitnami/APP:latest .

⁠ Using docker-compose.yaml

Please be aware this file has not undergone internal testing. Consequently, we advise its use exclusively for development or testing purposes. For production-ready deployments, we highly recommend utilizing its associated Bitnami Helm chart⁠.

⁠ Persisting your database

If you remove the container all your data will be lost, and the next time you run the image the database will be reinitialized. To avoid this loss of data, you should mount a volume that will persist even after the container is removed.

For persistence you should mount a directory at the /bitnami/mariadb path. If the mounted directory is empty, it will be initialized on the first run.

⁠ Connecting to other containers

Using Docker container networking⁠, a MariaDB server running inside a container can easily be accessed by your application containers.

Containers attached to the same network can communicate with each other using the container name as the hostname.

⁠ Configuration

The following section describes the supported environment variables

⁠ Environment variables

The following tables list the main variables you can set.

⁠Customizable environment variables

⁠Read-only environment variables

⁠ Initializing a new instance

When the container is executed for the first time, it will execute the files with extensions .sh, .sql and .sql.gz located at /docker-entrypoint-startdb.d.

In order to have your custom files inside the docker image you can mount them as a volume.

Take into account those scripts are treated differently depending on the extension. While the .sh scripts are executed in all the nodes; the .sql and .sql.gz scripts are only executed in the master nodes. The reason behind this differentiation is that the .sh scripts allow adding conditions to determine what is the node running the script, while these conditions can't be set using .sql nor sql.gz files. This way it is possible to cover different use cases depending on their needs.

⁠ Passing extra command-line flags to mysqld startup

Passing extra command-line flags to the mysqld service command is possible through the following env var:

• MARIADB_EXTRA_FLAGS: Flags to be appended to the startup command. No defaults

⁠ Setting character set and collation

It is possible to configure the character set and collation used by default by the database with the following environment variables:

• MARIADB_CHARACTER_SET: The default character set to use. Default: utf8
• MARIADB_COLLATE: The default collation to use. Default: utf8_general_ci

⁠ Setting the root password on first run

The root user and password can easily be setup with the Bitnami MariaDB Docker image using the following environment variables:

• MARIADB_ROOT_USER: The database admin user. Defaults to root.
• MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: The database admin user password. No defaults.
• MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE: Path to a file that contains the admin user password. This will override the value specified in MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD. No defaults.

Passing the MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD environment variable when running the image for the first time will set the password of the MARIADB_ROOT_USER user to the value of MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD.

Warning The MARIADB_ROOT_USER user is always created with remote access. It's suggested that the MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD env variable is always specified to set a password for the MARIADB_ROOT_USER user. In case you want to allow the MARIADB_ROOT_USER user to access the database without a password set the environment variable ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes. This is recommended only for development.

⁠ Allowing empty passwords

By default the MariaDB image expects all the available passwords to be set. In order to allow empty passwords, it is necessary to set the ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes env variable. This env variable is only recommended for testing or development purposes. We strongly recommend specifying the MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD for any other scenario.

⁠ Creating a database on first run

By passing the MARIADB_DATABASE environment variable when running the image for the first time, a database will be created. This is useful if your application requires that a database already exists, saving you from having to manually create the database using the MySQL client.

⁠ Creating a database user on first run

You can create a restricted database user that only has permissions for the database created with the MARIADB_DATABASE⁠ environment variable. To do this, provide the MARIADB_USER environment variable and to set a password for the database user provide the MARIADB_PASSWORD variable (alternatively, you can set the MARIADB_PASSWORD_FILE with the path to a file that contains the user password). MariaDB supports different authentication mechanisms, such as pam or mysql_native_password. To set it, use the MARIADB_AUTHENTICATION_PLUGIN variable.

Note! The root user will be created with remote access and without a password if ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD is enabled. Please provide the MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD env variable instead if you want to set a password for the root user.

⁠ Disable creation of test database

By default MariaDB creates a test database. In order to disable the creation of this test database, the flag --skip-test-db can be passed to mysql_install_db. This function is only on MariaDB >= 10.5.

To disable the test database in the Bitnami MariaDB container, set the MARIADB_SKIP_TEST_DB environment variable to yes during the first boot of the container.

⁠ Slow query logs

By default MariaDB doesn't enable slow query log⁠ to record the SQL queries that take a long time to perform. You can modify these settings using the following environment variables:

• MARIADB_ENABLE_SLOW_QUERY: Whether to enable slow query logs. Default: 0
• MARIADB_LONG_QUERY_TIME: How much time, in seconds, defines a slow query. Default: 10.0

Slow queries information is logged to the <data-dir>/<hostname>-slow.log file by default, and you can easily check it with the mysqldumpslow tool (link to docs⁠):

$ docker run -d -e MARIADB_ENABLE_SLOW_QUERY=1 -e ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes --name my-mariadb-container bitnami/mariadb
# wait a bit for the initialization process...
$ docker exec -it my-mariadb-container mysqldumpslow
Reading mysql slow query log from /bitnami/mariadb/data/<hostname>-slow.log
Count: 1  Time=0.01s (0s)  Lock=0.00s (0s)  Rows=0.0 (0), root[root]@localhost
  GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'S'@'S' WITH GRANT OPTION

Count: 1  Time=0.01s (0s)  Lock=0.00s (0s)  Rows=0.0 (0), root[root]@localhost
  CREATE USER 'S'@'S'

Count: 1  Time=0.01s (0s)  Lock=0.00s (0s)  Rows=0.0 (0), root[root]@localhost
  DELETE FROM mysql.user WHERE user not in ('S','S')

Count: 1  Time=0.00s (0s)  Lock=0.00s (0s)  Rows=0.0 (0), root[root]@localhost
  flush privileges
(...)

⁠ Slow filesystems

In some platforms, the filesystem used for persistence could be slow. That could cause the database to take extra time to be ready. If that's the case, you can configure the MARIADB_INIT_SLEEP_TIME environment variable to make the initialization script to wait extra time (in seconds) before proceeding with the configuration operations.

⁠ Setting up a replication cluster

A zero downtime MariaDB master-slave replication⁠ cluster can easily be setup with the Bitnami MariaDB Docker image using the following environment variables:

• MARIADB_REPLICATION_MODE: The replication mode. Possible values master/slave. No defaults.
• MARIADB_REPLICATION_USER: The replication user created on the master on first run. No defaults.
• MARIADB_REPLICATION_PASSWORD: The replication users password. No defaults.
• MARIADB_REPLICATION_PASSWORD_FILE: Path to a file that contains the replication user password. This will override the value specified in MARIADB_REPLICATION_PASSWORD. No defaults.
• MARIADB_MASTER_HOST: Hostname/IP of replication master (slave parameter). No defaults.
• MARIADB_MASTER_PORT_NUMBER: Server port of the replication master (slave parameter). Defaults to 3306.
• MARIADB_MASTER_ROOT_USER: User on replication master with access to MARIADB_DATABASE (slave parameter). Defaults to root
• MARIADB_MASTER_ROOT_PASSWORD: Password of user on replication master with access to MARIADB_DATABASE (slave parameter). No defaults.
• MARIADB_MASTER_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE: Path to a file that contains the password of user on replication master with access to MARIADB_DATABASE. This will override the value specified in MARIADB_MASTER_ROOT_PASSWORD. No defaults.
• MARIADB_MASTER_DELAY: The database replication delay (slave parameter). Defaults to 0.

In a replication cluster you can have one master and zero or more slaves. When replication is enabled the master node is in read-write mode, while the slaves are in read-only mode. For best performance its advisable to limit the reads to the slaves.

⁠ Configuration file

The image looks for user-defined configurations in /opt/bitnami/mariadb/conf/my_custom.cnf. Create a file named my_custom.cnf and mount it at /opt/bitnami/mariadb/conf/my_custom.cnf.

⁠Overwrite the main Configuration file

It is also possible to use your custom my.cnf and overwrite the main configuration file.

docker run --name mariadb  -e ALLOW_EMPTY_PASSWORD=yes -v /path/to/my.cnf:/opt/bitnami/m

_Note: the README for this container is longer than the DockerHub length limit of 25000, so it has been trimmed. The full README can be found at https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-tanzu/bitnami-secure-images/bitnami-secure-images/services/bsi-app-doc/apps-containers-mariadb-index.html_